Nowhere to Hide
by LastRefuge
Summary: It's supposed to be just another one of those routine questionings. Sent by Hotch to a witness' property located on the outskirt of Black Forest, Colorado, Emily and JJ unwittingly entered their worst nightmare.
1. Chapter I

**Author's Note: **After reading so many amazing CM stories on this site, I was inspired to write one of my own based on a crazy idea. So, here it is. There won't be any romance, rather, it'll be strong friendship between Emily and JJ. I hope you'll enjoy reading.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own CM, its plots or its characters.

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><p><em>"Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwrecks." <em>~ Robert Louis Stevenson

**CHAPTER I**

"Emily, are you sure we're heading in the right direction?" JJ asked. Her voice laden with uncertainty.

Peering out the side window, she was met with the same, unchanging scenery of thick bushes and mammoth trees with blanched snow concealing most of their natural, earthy colors. It would have been a beauteous sight to behold if not for how incredibly lifeless they seemed - their branches were stretched out frigidly in the air and the leaves appeared to be frozen in place. The only time they were disturbed was when the SUV whizzed past them and created a wave of raging, crackling rustles. Snow flakes were thrown off of their resting place violently while some of the more delicate branches snapped off from their main stem, leaving behind a trail of devastation in its wake.

An hour had gone by since the two of them left the local police station and made their way towards the witness' property located on the outskirt of town, but they appeared to be nowhere near their destination. They had been traveling untroubled on the highway for the first quarter of the hour before Emily directed the SUV onto a deserted, undivided route completely surrounded by dense snow-covered forests just off the main road. It was then that JJ started to get antsy.

God, how she hated the woods. The mere thought of it was enough to send goosebumps throughout her whole body. As of now, she was writhing uncomfortably in her seat as they continued to drive deeper and deeper into the midst of the woods. They were on the road long enough to notice there was no sign, no streetlight and no power line for miles and miles. They weren't sure when it happened, but a mist had appeared out of the blue to obscure part of their view of the road ahead, which only served to make the situation looked a whole lot worse. And to top everything off, there was also a deranged serial killer out there on the loose, making the entire scenario a perfect plot for a slasher film.

Looking back now, JJ couldn't believe it had actually taken her this long to voice her concern.

"Yeah, I'm following every one of Sheriff Sheridan's directions exactly as he wrote it," Emily assured as she took another look at the rather crumpled piece of notebook paper she had clutched in one hand, steering the wheel with the other. There was a sketch of a simple, tiny map in the middle with small, scribbled words littered all around it. By the looks of it, they should be coming to another turn soon.

"Do you think he could have gotten them wrong?" JJ asked hesitantly. A trace of fretfulness had slipped into her voice, despite her efforts to remain nerveless. She had never been one to question the knowledge of the locals and she felt awful to be questioning the Sheriff of all people. But they had been on the road for far too long with no end in sight, so the suspicion wasn't without any reason.

"I highly doubt it. The directions he gave are pretty specific; every crossroad, every turn," Emily replied. She glanced towards JJ, who was spotting a pensive expression, for a brief moment then turned her attention back onto the foggy road, keeping a keen lookout for the bend that was about to come. "And besides, he's lived in Black Forest his whole life, practically knows every inch in and around the town."

"I hope so," JJ sighed as she leaned the back of her head onto the headrest behind, producing a soft thump. "It's just, we're in the middle of nowhere... With no cell service."

"Don't worry, JJ," Emily said. She understood where JJ was coming from since she'd had her own reservations. There was something more than just insecurity for JJ though, and she knew it - she knew that JJ harbored fear for the woods. With a warm smile adorning her features, Emily tried to relieve some of JJ's anxiety. "There's still some way left to go. I'm sure we'll get there."

- - - v - - -

After traveling for a further twenty minutes, they reached their destination at last. The mist, which had accompanied and inconvenienced them on the journey for the past hour or so, dissipated almost as mysteriously as it had appeared. The first thing that greeted them was a frozen, partially rusted, reddish mailbox with the name 'Mullins' inscribed on side of it.

"Well, finally," Emily breathed out, cautiously driving the SUV into the property at a decelerated speed.

The end of the road was joined to a snow-clad greyish driveway that led them around a dull, white courtyard. At the center of it stood an aged, dried-out fountain, with cracks here and there, surrounded by bushes. A few of the shrubs had already wilted completely to leave their branches naked and exposed to the harsh winter, although most of them seemed to be striving on in the frosty weather with their leaves still visibly in their healthy green state despite being blanketed by snow flakes for the most part. Plain as they looked, they were well-groomed. Encompassing the courtyard were more of the same plants, just much taller.

"How can anyone live in a place this isolated?" JJ questioned incredulously, shaking her head as she did so. "I know I certainly can't. Making our way here once is already punishing enough for me. I can't imagine having to travel back and forth on that ridiculously long route just to get supplies."

"Not to mention human contact," Emily added after humming in agreement. She brought the SUV to a halt right in front of the front porch of the manor and switched off the ignition. The engine continued to boom and vibrate for a couple of seconds longer before dying out entirely and silence swooped in promptly to take over, filling the air with its dead calm.

It was like the deep breath before the plunge. For the next few moments, none of them spoke. They were just looking, listening, taciturnly studying everything around them.

When there was no sign of movement and no disruption to the eerie placidity, the two agents shared a look. Emily gave JJ what looked like an apologetic shrug before pushing the car door open and stepped out into the cold. Her boots landed on the snowy driveway with a thud and she trudged through the accumulated layer of snow over to JJ's side.

JJ, on the other hand, sagged her shoulders in resignation before following Emily's lead and exited the vehicle.

Feeling her bare hands beginning to freeze in the cold weather, Emily rubbed her palms together to generate some requisite warmth until she remembered the pair of gloves she had stuffed in her coat pocket. The gloves weren't as thick as she liked them to be, but they would have to suffice.

"It's awfully quiet," she said in a volume barely louder than a whisper, as if she was afraid to disturb the quietness. There was no sound of leaves rustling, no sound of wind blowing and no sound whatsoever from the vicinity or the distant. She would bet that if a needle dropped a mile away, she could hear it.

A chill traveled down the length of JJ's spine, making her body twitched involuntarily. She wasn't sure whether it was a reaction to the cold or the fact that she was unnerved by the silence. She automatically wrapped her coat tighter around her body and then folded her arms across her chest.

The two of them stood side by side at the bottom of the steps that led up to the porch, staring up at the manor before them. It was plain white, saved for some areas being browned or slightly blackened by dirt. Parts of the wall, especially at the corners, had been chipped off to reveal the more unattractive grey-colored cement beneath. The roof was covered with heaps of snow that had cascaded down from the sky, blending in nicely with its albescent tiles. Even with its considerable size, the manor was highly unremarkable in terms of its appearance, though it did give off a rather inimical vibe.

Just as Emily made a move to take the first step up the stairs, she was abruptly stopped by a hand gripping her upper arm and a soft voice calling her name. She turned her head back and was met with a pair of imploring blue eyes. With a worried frown creasing her smooth forehead, she gently held the elbow of the hand on her arm and asked, "what is it, JJ?"

"Do you think it's a good idea?" JJ questioned. Her words vaporizing into the still air as soon as they had escaped from her mouth. The apprehension that she was struggling with on the inside was clearly displayed across her face. Her eyes darted to the side briefly before reestablishing eye contact with Emily, who was looking at her expectantly with concern swirling in her brown eyes. "I mean, doesn't this place creep you out a little? 'Cause it's creeping me out, a lot. There's something off about this place. I can feel it."

"I know, JJ. Believe me, I'm just as uncomfortable about it as you are. But I don't think we have a choice here. We can't get any reception, we're miles off the highway and hours away from the town. The sky's getting dark soon, I'm thinking we should just get this done and over with so that we can get the hell outta here," Emily explained, even though there was nothing else she wanted more at that moment than to get into the SUV with JJ and drive away – away from the silence, away from the lifelessness. "So... What do you say?"

JJ hesitated for a few seconds, pondering over what Emily had said before sighing, "alright, but promise me we'll stay together no matter what happens, okay?"

At hearing that, Emily gave JJ a reassuring smile and nodded, "I promise."

_To Be Continued..._


	2. Chapter II

**A/N: **Thanks so much for the reviews, favorites and story-alerts!

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><p><em>"Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow."<em> ~ Dan Rather

**CHAPTER II**

Emily went ahead to press on the doorbell located by the side of the front door while JJ lingered a couple of steps behind her on the porch. She was expecting to hear a chime to pierce through the silence or at the very least, a muffled echo of the bell ringing. Much to her surprise though, there was no sound, no reverberation and the entire estate remained as silent as it was. She cocked her head and stared at the doorbell in bewilderment, wondering if it was even working at all. Furrowing her eyebrows, she decided to give it another try and hit the buzzer once more.

At the same time, JJ was scrutinizing their surroundings. She had this nagging feeling that was telling her someone was watching them. But having examining the area repeatedly with her wakeful eyes, she was unable to spot anyone or anything out of the ordinary for as far as she could see, which only left her feeling much more exposed than before. She unconsciously began to rub her hands up and down her arms for comfort.

Emily was becoming increasingly frustrated when no answer came forth after she had pressed on the doorbell for god knows how many times. She then opted for a different form of approach by rapping her knuckles on the front door and much to her surprise yet again, she realized the door wasn't as it appeared to be – paneled, wooded. It felt steely and extremely cool against her knuckles, not only because of the cold weather, but also due to the fact that it was made of metal. Without a closer inspection, the patternless, straight lines running down its surface and its unpolished, dark bronze color made it looked just like any ordinary wooden door.

Emily shook her head and chuckled humorlessly to herself. It seemed to her that the longer they stayed on the property, the more peculiarities they discovered about it. Raising her fist, she knocked on the front door, with extra force this time around. "Mr. Mullins?"

Seconds ticked by as the two agents waited patiently for an answer. JJ turned her attention to the windows next, checking them pane by pane from the first level up. Despite being fogged by condensation, they offered a clear enough view of the manor's interior and it was apparent that the rooms were not lit. She could see parts of furniture in them like the corner of a cupboard or the shade of a lamp, decorations like a vase of flowers or a framed painting hanging on the wall and by the far window on the third storey, a man in a leather mask.

She did a double-take.

"Oh my god," JJ gasped the moment she saw it. Her hand shot up to clutch her left chest where her suddenly madly thumping heart laid underneath, feeling as if she was on the verge of having a heart attack. She stumbled back a step, then another, almost falling backwards when her left foot took an unexpected step down the flight of stairs behind. Instinctively, she threw out her hand just in time to grab a hold of the pillar standing next to her. She hovered unsteadily at the edge of the porch, her mouth slightly agape and her eyes wide open. The near trip-up notwithstanding, they had managed to remain fixed on the window – the now vacant window, to be exact.

Emily was startled when she heard JJ gasped out of nowhere, instantly turning her head back in what could be described as a potential neck-breaking movement. She wasn't close enough to stop JJ from slipping off the step, but she was there in a flash to lend support to her swaying body by sliding an arm around her waist. She took in JJ's panic-stricken face which was close against hers and it scared her when she saw how ashen it looked, almost completely drained of blood. Her frustration was long gone and forgotten by this point. Instead, Emily was overwhelmed with concern and asked quickly, "JJ, what is it? What happened?"

JJ could barely hear Emily's voice over the sound of the pounding of her heart in her ears and she vaguely registered that the brunette was supporting her. She could hardly form a coherent thought as the image of the leather-masked man kept flashing across her mind. Did she actually see him by the window or was it simply a figment of her imagination? She debated the question with herself, but truthfully, the answer was all too clear.

"JJ, look at me," Emily told firmly. With each passing moment, she was getting more desperate, seeing how JJ was petrified and unresponsive. She shook the blonde slightly, trying to shake her out of her shock. Once JJ started blinking, she released a breath she didn't know she was holding. Softening her tone of voice, she said almost pleadingly, "look at me, JJ. Can you please talk to me? Tell me what happened."

When JJ felt her shock began to subside and the control over her senses coming back to her, she slowly turned towards Emily. It took a few moments before she found her voice, but even then, it was broken and barely audible, "I saw... I saw someone... He... He was..." Utterly frustrated by the inability to express herself properly, she squeezed her eyes shut as she willed her brain to concentrate and come up with a decent string of words.

"It's okay, JJ. Take a deep breath," Emily comforted, while doing her best to suppress the rising panic within herself. "Tell me who was it you saw. Where did you see him?"

"He... He was standing by the window," JJ breathed out. Her eyes were now opened, but instead of looking at Emily, she was simply staring off into the distance. Her face contorted into an agonized grimace when she started to describe his appearance. "I didn't see his face. He was wearing a... He was wearing a leather mask. Brown. It has stitches all over and he... He _looked_ directly at me."

Emily's jaw dropped. Whatever unrest she had about the place that she initially brushed off as paranoia, was beginning to justify itself. She could feel her skin prickle in the most unpleasant of ways. Snapping herself out of her stupor, she did a quick scan of every window that was facing the two of them in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the leather-masked man or any sign of activity within the manor that might indicate his presence. When she came up empty-handed, she shook her head in disappointment.

JJ, who was still feeling the remnants of her shock, panicked once she saw Emily shook her head. It immediately sent her thoughts into a frenzy. What does it mean? Was she dismissing her? Did she not believe her? Her chest started to rise and fall intemperately as her breathing became heavier. Uncertainty, dread and anger welled up inside JJ until they reached a point at which she was no longer able to contain them.

"I saw him, Emily!" She practically yelled out, causing the other woman to jump. "He was there one second and then he's gone the next. It sounds absurd, I know... But I saw him, Emily! It _wasn't_ an imagination. I know I saw him. You have to believe me!"

"Okay, JJ, calm down! I believe you! Of course I believe you," Emily responded quickly, albeit a bit defensively. She put her hand on JJ's shoulder, forcing it down lightly. She had no idea what had set JJ off all of the sudden, but figured it was probably because she was still freaked, which she had the absolute right to be. It's not everyday that a witness happened to be some leather mask-wearing creep, whom you caught watching you from the window of his creepy house.

Looking at Emily then, JJ realized that her panic was unwarranted and she cursed herself mentally for losing control of her emotions, her sanity. Seeing the man in the leather mask had caught her completely off guard, but she didn't help by allowing fright to take over her. With her eyes closed, she took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly through her nose as she tried to settle herself down and steel her nerves.

"I'm sorry, Em. I didn't mean to lose it," she said softly after a moment, running a tired hand through her hair.

Emily nodded understandingly and pressed her lips together to form a straight line, which was just about the biggest smile she could give given their circumstance.

JJ would have returned it, but she simply couldn't find it in her to do so and thus, she continued, "things are just getting out of hand. I _really_ think that we should get out of here, Emily. We don't know enough about Mullins to go barging in to his house. In fact, we can't even be sure if that's actually him I saw. There might be some power lines running near the second intersection, so if we can drive there and get a reception, we can call Hotch."

Pressing on both sides of her temple with her thumb and middle finger, Emily ran through their options in her head, as fast and as many as she possibly could. Neither of them had anticipated this, granted, the long drive was rather disconcerting. It was supposed to be another routine questioning, much like the million others they had done before.

Clearly, this had turned out to be nothing comparable to those.

"Okay," Emily drawled out after a few seconds of contemplative silence. "Alright. C'mon, let's go."

JJ was relieved to no end when Emily motioned in the direction of the SUV, considering how she was dying to get the hell out of the god-forsaken place.

The two agents then turned towards their vehicle, but hadn't so much as taken a step forward when a high-pitched screech resonated from behind them, causing them to freeze on their spots. It was so sickening that they felt like their teeth were melting, making them shudder involuntarily.

Mercilessly, the sound continued to stretch out for next few instances.

Stunned silence hung heavy in the air once the screeching stopped. Almost simultaneously, they turned their heads back tardily and their wide eyes came upon the source of that dreadful noise – the heavy metal door was now opened halfway. Inviting. Luring. Its sharp edge must have scraped against the marble floor when it was opening, evident by the nasty scratch marks on the ground and the marble specks running along their borders.

JJ's mind was blank as she stared disbelievingly at the open door, except for a single thought. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat and whispered, "did the door just..."

"Open by itself?" Emily finished, almost sardonically. She flicked her gaze to JJ and she could clearly see fear shimmering in those watery blue eyes, no doubt a reflection of her own fear as well.

Their fight-or-flight response screamed at them to run in the opposite direction, but they simply couldn't bring themselves to move. They were reconciling in their minds with the reality that this was the very unsub they had been searching unrelentingly for the last three days and not a standard witness that he had led them to believe he was. This was his way of telling them he knew they were here, had seen their every move.

He was presenting them with no other choice.

As if on cue, the two agents drew out their guns from their holsters in one swift motion and cautiously approached the open door. Emily took the lead while JJ fell in as close as she could behind her. She stopped right outside the entrance and then turned her head back to face JJ, lifting an eyebrow ever so slightly. Receiving a rather nervous nod from the blonde, Emily raised her Glock out in front of her and proceeded to step into the manor.

JJ followed Emily and set foot into the last place she wanted to be in on the face of the earth, with her heart hammering painfully against her chest and her knees feeling as though they were going to buckle anytime.

Once both of them were in the manor, they heard an all too familiar high-pitched screech before- _Boom!_

- - - v - - -

"Where're Prentiss and JJ?" Morgan asked as he stepped into the small conference room, noticing only Hotch and Reid were in it. He had just arrived back at the local police station with Rossi and the Sheriff after talking to the parents of their most recent victim, Shelley Dawson.

"They're out interviewing a potential witness. I don't expect them to be back soon, so let's just go over what we have now," Hotch replied. "Reid?"


	3. Chapter III

**A/N: **Thanks for the encouragements and responses! They really do give me the extra motivation to keep on writing and by the looks of them, I seem to have spooked a few of you. Guess I just want to stress that I'm simply a normal girl who has way too much time on her hands.

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><p><em>"God has given you one face, and you make yourself another."<em> ~ William Shakespeare

**CHAPTER III**

One split second.

That's how brief it took for breaths to hitch and heart rates to skyrocket. The humdrum, thunderous boom made the two agents jumped and whirled around all at the same time. Their brains were slow to catch up with their quick movements however, causing them to feel a little light-headed while their minds readjusted themselves. Their ear drums were vibrating almost violently as the deafening sound echoed off the walls around them and reverberated into their ears. All that was left behind once the vibration faded, was the sound of a tenuous buzz accompanying the distinct pounds of their hearts in their ears. With their firearms held out in front of them, they had the muzzles pointed threateningly at the closed metal door.

JJ let out her breath in relief when she recognized they weren't in any immediate danger and lowered her weapon. Her body was less tense than it was a second ago, but she could feel each and every one of the nerves in her body hanging by the edge, ready and waiting to go on a free-fall at the smallest of shake-ups. She passed her free hand over her face exasperatingly, allowing her eyes to remain closed afterward to recuperate.

"JJ," Emily called out softly to draw her attention. Her own focus though, was not on the blonde. She had noticed something uncanny about the door when she recovered from her scare and had moved closer to examine it. Fright slowly morphed into confusion. She reached her hand out towards the door, flattening her palm on its cool metal surface before smoothing over a small, specific expanse of it. Confusion then turned into dismay.

"What is it?" JJ asked, yet dreading the answer. She could only see the side of Emily's face, but it was enough to make out the troubled expression she was wearing and JJ found herself mirroring it. "Emily?"

"There's no knob on the door. No handle either," Emily answered in a controlled tone as she turned to face JJ. She was making a conscious effort to hide her fear, which to her annoyance, was making its presence known.

"What?" JJ breathed out, a tad harsher than she intended to. Her worried look was replaced by one of immense disbelief. She promptly sidestepped to have a better look at the door and her eyes instantly laid upon the empty expanse where there should have been some sort of hand-grip attached to it. She reached out her hand tentatively and touched the door, but retracted it almost immediately, as if she had been burned. "How could this be? There's one right on the other side. We both saw it."

"We did, that must be a faux use to keep up its appearance," Emily replied, her voice laced with an unmistakeable trace of indignation. The anger wasn't directed at JJ, but at the unsub for fooling them and more importantly, at herself for being fooled. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ward off the headache that was coming on. "This door has gotta be at least ten inch thick. Since we can't even try to pull it open, we have to find another way if we want to get out of-"

_Creak._

For a moment there, their hearts stopped. Emily's unspoken words caught in her throat and JJ's train of thought came to an instant halt. The sudden noise gripped them as a form of a chilling reminder. Having been so focused on the fact that they were trapped in the manor, they had completely missed the part about them being trapped in the manor _with _the unsub. Wasn't he the reason they were forced to come in here in the first place? Wasn't he the reason they were stuck in this predicament now? They stood rooted to their spots with their ears strained, listening to the silence, waiting to hear anything else.

Then, they heard a faint tick, followed by another, and another, and another before realizing they were the ticking of JJ's watch. What was normally buried under wave after wave of hustle and bustle, was now amplified a hundred times by the silence. It couldn't have been more than ten seconds later when the crisp sound of heavy boots colliding against the marble floor echoed throughout the manor. But then again, they weren't concentrating on counting.

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

It was clear that the footsteps were coming from above them. Slow, calm and steady. They tilted their heads up to the dirtied ceiling and turned slowly, allowing their eyes to follow the sound of the footsteps before the flight of unburnished marble staircase ahead of them caught their attention.

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

The footsteps was getting duller, as if the unsub was walking farther away from them and towards the stairs. Wordlessly, they raised their guns. It wouldn't be long before he would turn the corner and walk right into their line of fire.

JJ gulped down hard. Her heart was banging so hard against her chest, she thought it might explode anytime. Her eyes, brimmed with both determination and apprehension, were fixed on the empty area at the top of the stairs. She had seen the man, seen him in his hideous leather mask, seen the way he looked at her. The prospect of coming face-to-face with him made her hair stand and her skin prickle. She wriggled uncomfortably under her coat and shifted her footing restlessly from side to side. She knew she could be going through much worse though, had she not have Emily's reassuring presence next to her.

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

They held their breaths in anticipation. One more step. Just one more step and the unsub would reveal himself, maybe even be at their mercy. But he never showed. He had abruptly stopped short at turning the corner.

Emily couldn't help but frown deeply at the strange behavior. She turned her head a bit to the side and was met with JJ's equally clueless stare. Something was up, and the idea of them standing exposed in the entrance hall, waiting for the unsub to make a move made her ill at ease. As her mind started to run rampant, she readjusted her grip on her Glock, hoping to indirectly get a hold of herself.

"Joseph Mullins?" She called out, barely managing to keep her voice steady. "We're from the FBI. I'm gonna need you to show us your hands and walk out slowly."

Silence duly followed, stretching out almost unbearably before a click had the two agents perking up. A second later, the sound of a pin striking the marble floor was heard. She was right – something was definitely up.

Then, it happened. They saw a hand reached out beyond the wall and in a swinging motion, tossed a small black cylinder out into the air. To them, everything was happening too fast and too slow at the same time. They only had a couple of seconds to react and get out of the way as the grenade flew purposefully towards them.

"Holy-" Emily cursed when she saw the flying object, but never got the chance to finish it. She quickly dived to her right while pushing a stupefied JJ as far away as possible with her left hand. Her whole body then dropped painfully onto the rock hard ground. She hadn't even had time to recover when the grenade hit the floor about a feet away from her and exploded with a earsplitting bang, expelling a blinding flash almost simultaneously. Being so close to the explosion, the effects had her crying out in anguish. Her head was spinning out of control as she writhed on the floor with her hands pressed up tight against her ears and her eyes squeezed shut.

As a result, Emily never saw the handle of a shotgun coming.

JJ landed hard on her shoulder. The impact made her lose her hold of her gun as it fell out of her hand, sending it skidding across the floor. She let out a strangled groan at the crushing pain in her shoulder before crying out loud at the piercing pain in her ears when the stun grenade exploded. She instinctively shielded her head with her hands, but she wasn't fast enough to protect her eyes from being blinded by the flash that followed.

Remarkably, she still managed to force herself up on her feet with gritted teeth and slurred, "Emily..."

With her senses overwhelmed however, JJ was completely disoriented. She first staggered to her right, then to her left before finally stumbling forward. She had her right hand clutching her throbbing head and her left hand extended out ahead of her as she searched blindly for any support. She found it alright, just not in the form she wanted.

A rough hand gripped her outstretched hand on the wrist while another seized firmly at her throat. Her eyes instantly flew open, but her vision was too blur to be seeing clearly. She was made to backpedal when the unsub forcibly took a couple of steps forward, pushing her back until she hit the metal door behind. She turned her head to the side as she winced at the pain that shot up to her injured shoulder, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. It was then he chose to lean in, putting his face a mere inch away from hers.

JJ kept her eyes shut. She didn't turn back. She didn't want to. She could feel his hot, foul breath on her cheek as it escaped from the gaps between the stitches on his mask. It made her want to gag.

"O-pen," he growled after he had used the hand on her throat to turn her face towards him.

JJ's breathing became heavier than it had ever been. She bit down on the inside of her lower lip to keep it from quivering before doing as she was told. She slowly opened her eyes.

Right there, in front of her, JJ saw the face that would haunt her forever. The brown leather mask was wrapped skin-tight around the head and at the top, there were little clumps of curly black hair jutting out from the little openings. It just looked as though it was made from four tattered pieces of leather haphazardly sewed together. The sight of the unsub consumed her now cleared vision, so much so that she didn't notice Emily lying motionless on the floor hardly an arm's length away from them.

JJ wanted to scream, but she clenched her fist and stifled the urge to do it. She was determined not to show him any fear even as her body was trembling and her knees were going weak. She looked boldly into those manic, bloodshot green eyes and held his stare up till the moment he raised his fist and struck her across her face, plunging her world into nothingness.


	4. Chapter IV

**A/N: **Thanks so much for the kind words! I don't think I can ever say it enough. I truly appreciate you guys not only taking the time to read, but review as well. To _Anonymous _- this story is focusing more on the friendship between Emily and JJ so there probably won't be any romantic aspect involved. Hope this answers your question!

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><p><em>"Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven."<em> ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

**CHAPTER IV**

Hotch flicked his wrist and took a glance at the time on his watch. It's nearly seven in the evening, which meant Emily and JJ had already been gone for more than three hours. They should have called by now to update the team on the results of their questioning, yet there was still no word from them. He was starting to get worried.

"What's bugging you?" Rossi asked after noticing the grimmer than usual look on Hotch's face. He had moved to stand by the Unit Chief in front of the evidence board.

"Emily and JJ," Hotch stated simply.

Rossi nodded understandingly. "How long have they been gone?"

"Three and a half hours," Hotch answered as he stared at the photo of Shelley Dawson that was pinned onto the board. "It's just not like them to not have reported back after this while. I've tried calling them on their cell, but it kept going straight to voicemail."

"I heard from the Sheriff that it's a pretty long drive through the forest. Cellphone reception isn't exactly the greatest in the middle of the woods, just give the two of them a little more time. They'll call," Rossi convinced. He gave Hotch a pat on the shoulder before walking away to grab a seat at the conference table, resuming his previous work by picking up the open file he had put down earlier.

Hotch checked his watch again and huffed in silence. Three hours, thirty-five minutes and counting.

- - - v - - -

It was like being trapped in a dream you desperately want to wake up from. She could see nothing but darkness; could hear nothing but faint drips; could feel nothing but the dull, pulsating pain in her head. She tried her best to focus, but the awful headache she was having simply made it impossible. She was suspended helplessly in between the states of consciousness and unconsciousness.

Emily rolled her head from side to side as she fought to break out of the limbo she's in and regain control of her senses. Her brows were knitted together, her eyes were squeezed shut and her nose crinkled in quiet distress. A few moans managed to escape from deep within the base of her throat every now and then when the ordeal became too much for her to endure. The pain seemed to exacerbate the more she struggled, stretching on for what felt like an eternity.

Unseen water droplets fell from above, splattering onto her forehead bead by bead and she was slowly brought back to the real world. Her scrunched up features began to slacken and her eyes flickered for a couple of times before opening.

Fear was inevitable when Emily found herself still engulfed in total darkness. She instantly regretted her panicky movements as the throbbing in her head turned into vicious pounds.

"Ah... Shit," she cursed under her breath. Nonetheless, she gritted her teeth and forced herself up, dragging her lower body along the rugged ground and then leaned back onto the moist wall behind with a semi-contented sigh. She pressed her palm against her temple to apply pressure on the aching, but recoiled almost instantly, hissing at the raw pain the act caused. Carefully, she touched the tip of her fingers to the side of her head. That was when she felt something damp, sticky and tender. "What the hell?"

Since she couldn't see in the dark, Emily brought her hand to her nose and got a whiff of it. There was no doubt in her mind what it was once she breathed in the metallic smell. It was blood. She had absolutely no memory of how she ended up in the pitch-black. The last thing she remembered was trying to dodge the grenade the unsub had thrown in her direction. She reacted instinctively, but JJ looked to have been too surprise to move and so, she had to push her out of the way.

_Oh god, JJ._

It had taken her whacked brain a moment to realize, but the second she did, Emily was scrambling to get up on her feet. Headache be damned.

"JJ?" She called out worryingly. A bile of dread rose to her throat when silence answered. She tried squinting to see beyond the darkness, but it was to no avail. "JJ, if you're here somewhere can you please say something?"

Her heart clenched in rue when she got no response, falling back against the wall dejectedly. She was powerless to the onslaught of terrifying images of JJ screaming and squirming in the hands of the unsub as they flooded her mind. But before Emily could get to the unthinkable, a muffled whimper snapped her out of her thoughts. She quickly pushed herself off the wall she was resting on. "JJ, is that you?"

"Emily?" JJ's husked, confused voice filled the darkness. "Emily, where are you? I can't see you. I can't see anything. I can't-" Her words all came out in a rush, accentuating her panic, before she was overcame by a coughing fit.

"It's okay, JJ, calm down. Stay where you are, okay? I'm coming to you," Emily assured. She then turned towards where she thought JJ's voice had came from and stretched out both her hands. Being submerged in complete darkness, she had to drag her bare feet along the wet, rocky ground to avoid missteps and sweep her hands sideways continuously for any obstacles ahead as she moved. It would have been rather amusing in a different circumstance, but there was nothing funny about their current situation.

It was a nightmare come true.

"Ow!" Emily cried out when something sharp cut into the underside of her foot.

"Emily? What's happening? Are you hurt?" JJ asked in a haste. There was a moment of silence afterward, as if she was in contemplation. "Why don't you stay put? Let me come to you instead."

"No!" Emily protested straightaway, knowing from her own painful experience that JJ could very well get hurt. "I'm fine. I'm okay. Just don't move. I'm coming to you."

Emily lifted her foot up, placing it on top of her other thigh and let her hand wander around the bottom of her foot for the lodged object. When she found it, she wedged it between her thumb and forefinger before yanking it out in one fleet motion. Her mouth opened wide to emit a silent scream and she was careful not make too loud a noise as she muttered a string of colorful curses. She then slowly put her foot down and limped her way forward, wincing every so often when the jugged surface of the ground dug into her fresh wound.

The was a foul, rotting smell in the air which Emily hadn't notice until now and it only got stronger the further she went. When it became unbearable, she used one of her hands to shield her nose from the odor. She didn't know how far she had gone when her hand came into contact with something soft. She flinched initially, before hesitantly reaching out again and curled her fingers around it.

It felt fleshy.

"JJ?" She called out uncertainly.

"I'm here, Emily," JJ replied.

Emily's blood ran cold. The sound of JJ's voice was too distant for her to even be standing near her, let alone right in front of her. Maybe the darkness was messing with her senses. Maybe the pounding in her head was overwhelming her hearing. Or maybe...

She cleared the lump in her throat, but failed to keep the tremble out of her voice as she spoke, "do you feel my hand on your arm?"

Silence.

She could almost picture the puzzling frown working its way onto JJ's face.

"Your hand's on my arm?" Came the dreaded answer, choked full of confusion and doubt. "But Emily... I don't feel it."

Her heart started to race as she repeated the words in her head over and over. Still, Emily stood unmoving and her hands remained gripping. She was dumbstruck. If it's not JJ's arm she was grasping, then...

All of the sudden, white lights shone down from above and chased away the darkness. At first, Emily cringed at the abrupt brightness that struck her sensitive eyes, but when she saw what she was gripping onto, her eyes widened with pure horror. She sprang then stumbled back a step, crashing loudly into the metal table behind.

It was a calf of a human body.

Nothing could have prepared Emily for the sight presented before her, not even the years of training and experience in which she thought she had seen it all. There were about a dozen human corpses hanging from the ceiling, each with a noose wound tightly around their necks, each in a different state of decomposition. The one closest to her, the one whose calf she grasped, belonged to none other than their latest victim, Shelley Dawson. Her body hung limply in the air, swinging every which way. Her entire abdomen looked to have burst open with her internal organs split and spattered to create a bloody mess all around.

Emily turned away from the macabre sight, grimacing in utter disgust. Her stomach churned at the horrid smell of the decaying bodies and just when she was about to barf, she heard gurgles coming from not far behind. She turned back immediately and through the gaps between the hanging bodies, she saw a familiar figure bending over in the opposite corner.

"JJ," she breathed out in recognition.

Before she knew it, Emily found herself surrounded by dangling legs as she cut across the dingy room, scampering to get to JJ. She winced in pain when she stepped on a particularly rough chip of cement and it jabbed right into the rare wound at the bottom of her foot, but she paid no extra attention to it and continued to plow forward. Within seconds, she was kneeling next to her partner.

JJ couldn't remember the last time she felt this bad, if she even did at all. Tears stung her eyes as she purged, emptying her stomach contents thoroughly. With her eyes closed while she tried to catch her breath, JJ was shocked when she felt foreign hands gathering up her hair, causing her to snap her head sharply to the side.

"Emily?" She whispered. Her misty eyes barely able to make out the face in front of her.

Emily's heart broke when she saw JJ's face. Her blonde hair was in a mess, there was a large bruise across her left jaw and tears were streaming down her cheeks from her puffy blue eyes. "Yeah, it's m-" She hadn't even finished speaking when JJ threw herself onto her, burying her face in the crook of her neck and started to sob uncontrollably.

"Shh, I'm here. Everything's gonna be okay. I'm going to get us out of here, alright? We'll be fine. We'll be okay," Emily murmured as she rubbed her hand up and down JJ's back soothingly, trying her best to comfort her. It seemed to be working when she felt JJ began to relax in her arms, letting her settle down before slowly pulling away. She gently wiped the tears off JJ's cheek with her thumb and then brushed it lightly across her jaw. "What did he do to you?"

JJ shook her head dismissively as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "He threw a punch at me, that's all. It's not as bad as it looks."

Emily quirked a skeptical eyebrow. "Do you even know how bad it looks?"

"However bad, I'm sure it's not worse than yours," JJ replied. She lifted a hand to touch Emily's wound, but pulled back at the last second. "God, Emily... You're bleeding."

"Yeah, I don't even know how it happened," Emily sighed, darting her eyes away from JJ for a moment. When she looked back, there was the tiniest of impish glints in them. "But it's not as bad as it looks."

This time, it was JJ's turn to raise an eyebrow. She saw a smile slowly spread across Emily's face and she couldn't help but get infected by it. Her smile though, faded the instant her eyes laid on the bodies hanging behind Emily. She swallowed hard before asking, "what do you think he did to those women?"

"I don't know, but I'm not waiting around to find out. We need to look for a way out of here. Wherever the hell here is," Emily said as she stood up. She held out her hand for JJ to take and helped her up on her feet.

"He took away our boots," JJ uttered softly, looking down at both their bare feet then up her own body. "Our coats and guns too."

"Yeah, but on the bright side, he left our clothes and pants on," Emily replied. She turned around and looked about the room they were in, spotting two doors at either side of it. One of them appeared to be the same as the front door of the Mullins' manor while the other seemed more normal with a handle and such.

Then again, looks could be deceiving, so she had came to learn the hard way.

"What are you thinking?" JJ asked, having studied the room as well.

"Well, we can't pull that door open," Emily answered matter-of-factly, gesturing at the metal door. "Not that we can even if there's something for us to pull on; who knows how heavy it weighs. So, it just leaves us with only one option." She looked towards JJ, who at that point, was simply staring blankly at the ground.

It was a heartrending sight. She would give anything just to return the spark to JJ's eyes.

Intertwining their fingers, Emily gave JJ's hand an encouraging squeeze. She got a weak nod of the head and a forced smile in return, but they were better than nothing at all. With their hands holding on to each others', they slowly walked to the door, stepping over bits and pieces of coarse cement littered around. They stayed close to the damp walls, keeping as far a distance away from the bodies at the center of the room as possible. When they reached it, Emily wrapped her fingers around the handle and forcefully pulled it open, dragging the bottom of the door along the bumpy surface of the ground.

It led them into an empty room. There was though, another door ahead of them with the alphabet 'I' attached to it in gold mold. Emily didn't know what laid behind it, but one thing was for sure – no one had ever came out the other end, alive.


	5. Chapter V

**A/N: **Thanks a million for the support! I'm still learning the craft as I go and the boost that the support has given me is more than I can describe.

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><p><em>"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."<em> ~ Albert Einstein

**CHAPTER V**

JJ's heart dropped when Emily pulled open the door only to reveal another. She knew she was naive to think it would provide an immediate way out for them, but she couldn't resist hoping. To her, everything felt so surreal, like she had simply dazed off into her imagination and a snap of the fingers or a pinch on her arm would her bring out of it anytime. She quickly shook her head to obviate the thought; she couldn't afford to lose her sanity.

"What do you think is behind it?" She asked, looking over Emily's shoulder at the mahogany door. The two of them were standing quite a few feet away, but she could still see crimson spatters of dry blood on it. The color of the door in the background was just about enough of a darker shade to set the gruesome display apart.

"Hopefully? Sunshine and rainbow," Emily quipped, making herself sound blithe before her expression turned somber. "Honestly? Nothing good."

JJ nodded drearily, having expected as much. She averted her eyes from the ominous door and looked off to the side, searching in vain for a spot that wasn't tainted with blood, dirt or rust, a speck of hope in a room filled with gore and death. As her eyes wandered, they came upon a row of large jars lined up perfectly on a metal ledge fixed onto the wall.

"Emily," she called out softly, tugging at the brunette's hand at the same time to get her attention. Allowing her curiosity to get the better of her, JJ didn't wait for a response and just released her hold on Emily's hand and started to move towards the ledge.

"Yeah, JJ, what is it?" Emily turned her head back and asked, only to see JJ disappear from over her right shoulder. "JJ?" She turned to her other side and noticed JJ didn't seem to have heard her as she continued to walk farther away.

Hurrying after JJ, Emily had to be mindful of the tender wound prickling on the underside of her foot. She focused on tiptoeing her way around and over the small damned pieces of debris, which had fallen from the ceiling, laying on the ground, occasionally looking up to see where JJ was heading. She was already worried sick about the blonde and her strange behavior wasn't exactly helping to ease her concern.

Getting a bit frustrated at everything that's happening, Emily inadvertently had her voice raised when she called out, "JJ, where are you go-" With her eyes trained on the ground, she didn't see JJ stop ahead of her, causing her to bump right into JJ's back. She was about to give a little lecture, but instantly lost track of her thoughts when the large glass jars sitting on the shelf in front of them snatched her attention.

"What the hell are these?" She asked, slipping in a curse to vent her pent-up frustration.

"Looks like blood. With bits and chunks of..." JJ trailed off as her mind blanked. She bent down slightly to take a closer look at the jar in the middle and studied its contents. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to make out the matters floating in the body of thick red fluid. "I can't even tell what they are. Do you think these belong to the women?"

"Could be," Emily answered, then turning around and did a quick scan of the victims. "They don't add up though. There are twelve bodies hanging from ceiling, but there are only six jars here on the table."

"This is insane. He killed _at least_ twelve women and we've only got pictures of five back at the station. How did we miss them?" JJ questioned maddeningly. She was mad at the unsub, mad at her incompetence and mad at the possibility that none of these would be happening to them if they had dug deeper. Her hands had a vise-like grip at the edges of the metal ledge and as her anger built, her grips became increasingly tighter to the point where all of her knuckles had turned white from the sheer amount of force she was exerting.

"Well, we only know of the five victims because they were abducted from Black Forest. He could have taken the others from neighboring towns and counties, which means they're out of the town's jurisdiction," Emily explained calmly even as she was fighting the urge to reach out and touch JJ, trying instead to soothe her raging nerves with words. "Besides, there was no way to tie all of them together since none of the bodies of the missing was ever found."

JJ closed her eyes and let Emily's words sink in. She didn't mean to lose her temper and she seldom ever did, but it was hard not to in the face of adversity. As a wave of calmness washed over her, she relaxed her hold on the ledge. "Now we know why; he's keeping them in here."

"Yeah, so that he can come back whenever he wants and admire his handiwork. If we don't find a way out, he's gonna have two more bodies to add to his collection. C'mon," Emily beckoned with a tilt of her head, extending out her hand as an indication for JJ to take, which she did without hesitation and they carefully made their way back to the mahogany door.

The ground in the empty room was smoother with the sandy feel of dust and next to no cement chip strewed around, much to Emily's relief. It was evidently much cleaner too, except for the dry pool of blood in the center brightened by the white light casting down from a simple round ceiling lamp directly above, giving it an impression of a hell fire. They avoided stepping on the pool of blood, opting to walk around it to get to the door.

"It's locked," Emily sighed as she jiggled the doorknob.

"I'd be surprise if it's not," JJ said, running her hands exasperatingly through her blonde hair. She slid her back down the wall next to the door in exhaustion and then settled down on the ground with her knees hugged close to her chest. "So what do we do? Wait? Hotch should have realized by now that we've been gone too long. The team's probably already coming for us."

"Probably, but we don't know for sure. We don't even know where we are or how long it's been," Emily replied while she moved to plop down beside JJ. She hated the fact that she had to keep JJ from getting her hopes up. It was disheartening not only for JJ, but for herself as well, even more so when she knew in her heart she was merely stating the truth about the grim reality of their situation.

Leaning the back of her heavy head against the wall, JJ let out a defeated breath. "You're right. God, what was I thinking?"

"Don't be so hard on yourself, JJ," Emily chastised softly. She placed her hand on top of JJ's knee, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "If it makes you feel any better, I actually thought of the same thing."

"Not really, but thanks for trying," JJ murmured, looking to the side to meet gentle chocolate-brown eyes. "You know, I have no idea what I would've done without you."

Emily smiled at the admission. "Hey, I'm always gonna be here for you, no matter what."

"Thanks, Em," JJ uttered bashfully and returned the smile in kind. It was the first time she smiled, a genuine one for that matter, since... Well, she couldn't remember. Her memories were beginning to fade away, moving just beyond her reach. "How long do you think he's going to hold us in here?"

"I don't know, but it just doesn't make any sense for him to keep us locked up," Emily replied before pausing to gather her scattering thoughts. "He knows who we are. He has to know that the police are catching on to him. He could've killed us while we were unconscious and yet, he didn't. Instead, he threw us right into the room where he's keeping all of his victims."

JJ furrowed her brows, mulling over what Emily had said. "Unless he's sure that no one can find us."

"Or that we'll be dead before anyone does," Emily added, thrusting their current position further into hopelessness. Unable to sit still any longer, she stood up and started to pace back and forth. It was something she had always liked to do to help her thought process. "Alright, so he took our coats, our guns and our shoes away. What if... What if he left us something too?"

"Like a key?" JJ wondered dubiously, wearing a matching expression on her face.

"I'd guess so. How else are we gonna open the door?" Emily asked rhetorically, gesturing towards said object. She had stopped her pacing and was now standing in front of JJ. "It can't be here for no reason."

"Okay, let's say you're right about this, then where do you think he put it?" JJ questioned, steadily warming up to the idea.

Emily opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it immediately after. She had a hand resting on her hip and the other scratching on her forehead. "Well, if I'm the unsub, I'll most likely leave it in a place where the victim will be able to find it. So it can't be somewhere too vague," she thought out loud. "Let's try going through our pockets, if we can't find anything maybe there's something back in the room we missed."

JJ nodded and pushed herself up with the support of the wall behind. She stuffed her hands into the front pockets of her dress pants, feeling around the insides. She looked up briefly to see Emily doing the same thing, only difference being she had her hand in her back pocket. She was about to pull her hands out when the fingertips of her right hand came into contact with a cool, jagged object, causing her to halt all movements. _Could it be?_

"JJ," Emily called out with a teensy trace of exhilaration in her voice. She tugged at her own hand, trying to get it out from her back pocket. "I think I've got some-"

"Emily," JJ interrupted. She had her eyes fixed on the silver key she held between her fingers before tearing them away to look up at Emily, who was holding up a small roll of note. Their eyes met with astonishment.

"What does it say?" JJ asked as she hastily close the distance separating them.

"Nothing. It's just separated into eight parts with the word 'exitus' written in the last one," Emily replied, staring at the unrolled paper. Then, it struck her. "The label on the door... The alphabet 'I' stands for one in roman numerals and 'exitus' is Latin for exit."

"So basically, he's trying to tell us we have to go through eight doors to get to the exit?" JJ drawled out disbelievingly. "_If_ there is one."

The whole concept did sound absurd to Emily once JJ had said it aloud, but she knew they had nowhere else left to go. It was a chance they had to take.

"I suppose there's only one way to find out," she said resignedly and took the key from JJ. She inserted it into the keyhole, tardily turning it in the counterclockwise direction and heard a cluck as the door came unlocked.

"Be careful, Emily. We don't know what's in there," JJ whispered when she saw Emily placed her hand on the doorknob. "And like you said earlier, it's in all likelihood nothing good."

"I know, JJ. I will. Just stay behind me," Emily instructed, making sure JJ was indeed behind her before turning the knob. She pushed open the door, inch by inch, allowing the shaft of light from within the room to creep out. She had already opened it slightly less than halfway and so far, the room appeared to be empty. Giving it one last push, the door slowly swung open.

She heard it first. She saw it second. But by then, it was all too late.


	6. Chapter VI

**A/N: **Thanks for the wonderful reviews! I sincerely apologize for this later-than-usual update!

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><p><em>"We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death." <em>~ David Sarnoff

**CHAPTER VI**

Emily heard a weak snip, then she saw the black hole. It happened one after the other, but felt as if everything happened at the same time. In that one fateful moment. In the slowest second of her lifetime.

As she stared death in the face with possibly her last breath hitched in her throat, she watched her entire life played out before her eyes – the things she did, the people she loved and the regrets she had. She wished it'd stretched on longer so she'd have the time to react, but the second simply ticked by without hesitation, without mercy.

And the shotgun went off at her with a deafening blast.

"Argh!" Emily cried out in anguish and threw her head backwards as the bullet blazed its trail and grazed the side of her mid-drift, searing and splitting her skin open along with the fabric of her double layer of clothes. Driblets of blood that broke loose from their confinement were drawn straight down to earth by the pull of gravity, creating a string of crimson splatters on the dull cement floor.

"Emily!" JJ exclaimed in utter horror, catching a hold of the brunette as she crumbled. She slowly got down on one knee and eased Emily down onto the ground with all the care in the world.

"JJ..." Emily forced out amidst her haziness, her voice strangled. It wasn't so much as the blistering pain that caused her blurred vision and disorientation. Pain, she could handle, but not the shock of her near-death experience. She rolled her head to the side, mumbling some incoherent words.

"I'm here, Em. I'm right here," JJ cooed, fighting to stifle a sob. She gently brushed damp locks of brown hair away from Emily's pale face with her trembling hand to reveal the twisted features. Beads of sweat that had emerged from Emily's forehead glistened under the bright light. "You'll be fine. I'll make sure of that. Just lie still, okay?"

"Oh god..." She breathed out shakily when she saw a constant stream of blood flowing out from the wound on Emily's side to form a widening red puddle on the floor just below her waist. She quickly pressed the palm of her hand onto the wound to stop the bleeding, but she knew it wasn't a sustainable solution. Her tear-filled eyes darted around the room frantically in search of something useful, but there was only a whole lot of nothing. "C'mon JJ, think!" She scolded herself, willing her frenzied mind to concentrate. She lifted her arm and furiously wiped her clammy nose with the sleeve of her shirt.

It was then a light bulb illuminated in her mind.

"Emily, I need you to help keep pressure on the wound, alright? Can you do that?" She asked softly, giving Emily's shoulder an encouraging squeeze. When she received a faint nod of the head, she took away her bloodied hand and replaced it with Emily's. "You're going to be okay. Just keep putting pressure on it. Keep putting pressure..." She trailed off as she became caught up with tugging her shirt over her head. She was wearing quite a few of them to ward off the freezing cold of the winter and since the weather didn't matter now, it certainly wouldn't hurt to lose one or two.

As she ripped the seams of her shirt apart with force, JJ threw worried glances at Emily every few seconds to make sure she was still conscious, breathing and alive. In the back of her mind, she knew the chances of Emily dying right there and then were slim, but she was too scared out of her mind to recognize it. Less than a minute later, she turned her full attention to her wounded partner, holding a large piece of bloodstained sky-blue cloth in her hands. "Emily, I have to wrap this around your stomach to stop the bleeding, but I can't do that with you lying down. Can you sit up for me?"

"Yeah..." Emily said through gritted teeth, blinking her eyes to clear the murkiness that clouded her vision. She could feel the shock gradually draining from her body, but unfortunately, so was her blood. With the help of JJ, she slowly pushed herself up using her free hand and carefully shifted her body so that her back was facing the wall beside the door.

"Okay, nice and easy. Now lean back," JJ instructed, pushing Emily's shoulder lightly. She then tenderly grasped Emily's wrist and moved it away from the wound. A gasp escaped her mouth before she had the chance to stop it. It was the first time she got a real close-up look at the full extent of the injury.

"Does it look bad?" Emily asked hesitantly, looking down at JJ.

"It's..." JJ sighed, words failing her. She clenched her jaw and averted her watery eyes away from the gory wound, wrapping the cloth around Emily's waist to cover it up; a mere glimpse of it enough to send her heart into spasm. "It doesn't look good," she admitted after a few moments of silent concentration while she tied the knot to secure the make-shift bandage. "But none of your internal organs is hit, so there's the silver lining."

Emily nodded and smiled weakly, giving JJ a muted 'thank you', though it looked more of a grimace. Her entire body felt like it was burning on the inside as sweat slithered down the side of her face and dripped off her chin.

"How are you feeling?" JJ asked, looking into Emily's heavy-lidded eyes. "And please don't tell me you feel like you just got shot."

"Actually... I was going to say... I feel like... I got my side sp-" Emily halted her breathy, broken response when she saw JJ frown disapprovingly at her. "I'm okay, JJ. Like you said... I'll be fine... So don't worry," she assured, her chest rose and fell heavily as she tried to catch her breath. She did her best to focus her vision on JJ while the room spun around her; dizziness brought on by the intense burning sensation of her wound.

"Don't worry? How can I not, Em? One inch over and the bullet would've ripped a hole in you! You could've died..." The final few words came out in the form of a cracked whisper, emotions choking off her voice. JJ closed her eyes to prevent tears from spilling out. She sagged down onto the floor in weariness, leaning her shoulder against the wall; all the scare, panic and worry were beginning to take a toll on her body.

"I know, JJ... All of it," Emily replied in a quiet voice. She reached out to put a comforting hand on JJ's thigh, but pulled back when she saw her blood-covered hand. She stared at it as her mind drifted to the women hanging by their necks in the next room. "That's how Shelley Dawson died... I didn't know when I saw her body before, but now it makes sense... She never made it past the first door."

"I can't believe this is happening," JJ said hoarsely, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. "What the hell are we suppose to do now?"

"The only thing we can do," Emily replied enigmatically, wearily wiping the blood off her hand with her pants. She met JJ's questioning stare when she looked up. "We go on."

- - - v - - -

"Emily, are you sure you don't want to rest for a little while longer?" JJ asked in concern, a response to Emily's insistence that they not waste anymore time and get going. "I don't think you should be moving this soon after getting shot." She would never admit it, but there was one more reason she didn't want them to go forward so soon; JJ knew in her heart she was afraid to move on, afraid of what laid behind the subsequent doors.

"It's just a bullet graze wound, JJ, and we've been sitting here for the last... Well, I'm not sure how long exactly, but I've rested enough. I feel a lot better now. Honestly," Emily avowed, proceeding to stand on her own, waving off JJ's attempt to help her up in order to prove her point. "See, I'm fine."

"Right," JJ deadpanned as she narrowed her eyes at a still somewhat pallid-looking Emily. She then bent down to inspect the wound.

"Looks like the bleeding has stopped," JJ stated, making a face at the bloody sight. She shifted the cloth around Emily's waist as careful as she could in a way that the wound would be covered by a cleaner patch before she retied it. "Alright, but you're standing behind me this time," she added, the words tumbling out of her lips as her protective instinct triumphed over her fear. She held up a finger when she saw Emily was about to open her mouth to protest. "Save whatever it is you want to say, Prentiss, 'cause I'm not taking no for an answer. You almost scared me to death earlier. I'm not going through that again, you got it?"

"Yeah," Emily sighed in defeat. Saying she felt uncomfortable with the arrangement was a major understatement, but she could only relent at the determined look on JJ's face.

Stepping into the room with Emily half a step behind, JJ had her first look at the shotgun that almost took Emily's life. It was mounted on a dark-colored wooden table positioned in the center of the room, under the spotlight with its muzzle aimed menacingly in the direction of the doorway. Burned odor of gun powder lingered in the stale air. She walked past the table, staring down at the blood trails on the floor that led all the way to the next door. She could just visualize one of the victims soldiering on as life slowly bled out of her body, desperately clinging on to the hope that an exit was waiting for her at the other end, silently praying that it wouldn't be a door too far.

JJ quickly shook her head to abolish the mental images when the person she was picturing became someone all too familiar – herself. She might be in the same god-forsaken place as the victims, but that didn't mean she would suffer the same fate. They had been alone, by themselves with no one to lean on, but she wasn't. She had Emily.

As her thoughts wandered to the brunette, JJ realized the lack of presence behind her. She promptly turned back and found Emily standing at the back of the open door, her hands fiddling with a thin, white string, roughly three feet long, that was coiled around the doorknob.

Emily's eyes were trained on the string, but she didn't need to look up to know JJ was staring at her; she could feel it. "I'm guessing this was tied to the trigger. It must have snapped when I pushed the door open, setting the gun off," she said, her voice was calm and void of emotions. "Mystery solved." She forced a smile, one that didn't even embark on a trip to her eyes.

Not quite sure what to say, JJ simply nodded and they fell into silence.

"Well, we should probably get a move on. One door down, seven to go, right?" Emily spoke out after a couple of seconds, cursing herself quietly for being the cause of the awkwardness.

"Yeah," JJ breathed out, dropping her head as she turned and started towards the closed door.

The door was similar to the one before, but instead of the single golden alphabet 'I', there were now two of them attached to the door with a silver key hanging on its knob. Just as JJ was taking it off, Emily reached out and grabbed her wrist gently. "JJ, I think I sh-"

"Emily, we've had this conversation," JJ interrupted, raising her volume slightly. "I know you're only looking out for me and I appreciate that. I really do, but I can't let you risk your life again. If you want the key, you're gonna have to fight me for it." She looked Emily squarely in the eyes, resolve gleaming in her own. Her threat seemed to work when Emily's expression softened and her hand fell limply from her wrist back to her side, allowing her to simply take the key away.

"Like I could ever win," Emily muttered under her breath, but she did it loud enough for JJ to hear it.

"You got that right," JJ replied with a hint of amusement, smirking a bit. "Now, would you just get behind me?"

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose before doing as she was told with utmost reluctance. She felt as if her body weighed a tonne when she moved, with each step she took heavier than the last. Yet, somehow, she managed to get herself situated behind JJ. When she lifted her head and looked over JJ's shoulder, she noticed the peephole on the door and she quickly turned to look at the door they had opened, which had one too.

There was only one purpose for that.

"JJ," she whispered into the blonde's ear. "I think the unsub's watching us through the peephole."

"What?" JJ squeaked uncharacteristically at the revelation, her head snapping sharply to the side. "He's behind this door?"

"No, JJ! That's not what I meant," Emily clarified quickly. "What I'm trying to say is there's a hidden camera in the peephole."

"God, Emily!" JJ scolded as she whirled around, balling up her fist to punch Emily in the arm, but remembered at the very last second that the brunette was in a weak shape. So, she chose the good old fashion shouting instead. "You almost scared me to death! _Again!_"

"I'm sorry," Emily said, holding up her hands, flashing her palms at JJ. A sheepish expression creeping onto her face. "I didn't know you thought I had X-Ray vision."

"That's not funny, Em," JJ bawled out, shooting Emily a displeased look. Her nerves were already on the edge and Emily had just gave them a hard shove over. She placed her hand over her left chest, feeling her heart rate slowing down beat by beat before turning back to the door. She glanced briefly at the peephole, goosebumps tingling her arms when she pictured the bloodshot green eyes behind the leather mask staring back at her, watching as they struggled through the traps he set and getting off on it.

Taking a deep breath to soothe her nerves, JJ tilted her head back and said calmly, "I'm gonna open the door now, Emily. So can you please stand behind me?"

Emily, feeling guilty for giving JJ a panic attack, obeyed without further contest and took up a position behind her once more. She placed a firm hand on JJ's hip, so that she could pull her back should anything come flying out of the door. She closed her eyes momentarily to prepare herself when JJ inserted the key, her grip on JJ's hip tightened. _I hope I don't regret this._


	7. Chapter VII

**A/N: **Thanks so much for the reviews! I apologize for taking such a long time between updates. I hope everyone is still, for the lack of a better word, enjoying this!

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><p><em>"We acquire the strength we have overcome."<em> ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

**CHAPTER VII**

"I feel like I'm in that Samuel L. Jackson movie," Emily mused, standing a few steps away from the doorway as her eyes roamed around every expanse of the room, which JJ had opened the door to a few moments ago. "Just not on a plane."

"How many of them do you see?" JJ asked, a noticeable tremor in her voice. A look of disbelief was plastered on her face as she stared with her eyes wide at the scene she'd revealed when she pushed the mahogany door open with her sweaty palm, one that she'd never expect to see even in her wildest imagination. She tried to swallow, but the moisture in her mouth had already evaporated.

The second room wasn't nearly as silent and empty as the one they were in. Its air was filled with the sounds of hair-raising hisses and menacing rattles, its ground was covered in morsels and pieces of glass, with some unmistakeably tinted with blood. Lying on top of them, were snakes of triangular heads and light brown scales. They were scattered all over the room, seemingly minding their own business.

"Fifteen, give or take," Emily answered after doing a mental head count. "How much you wanna bet that they're venomous?"

"My life," JJ replied humorlessly without missing a beat. "God, how are they able to move? There are shards of glass everywhere. Doesn't it hurt to glide on them?" She wondered aloud as she watched with incredulity one of the snakes move effortlessly through the glass, fluttering its forked tongue and rattling its beaded tail every so often, not flinching the slightest.

"JJ, I don't mean to be crude, but right now, I really don't give a crap about their welfare. If you're worry about them, we can call PETA when we're out of here," Emily quipped.

"Emily, I'm not. What I'm worry about is getting past them to get to the door," JJ said, surveying the situation in the room. Some of the snakes were lying motionless on the layer of glass with their lengthy body curled up snugly, while some were gliding their way through to nowhere in particular. She could feel goosebumps steadily crawling up from her legs to her body, down both of her arms, before the sensation left her fingertips tingling. Releasing a shaky breath, she asked, "do you see a way?"

Emily nodded slightly. "Not a clear one though. The glass fragments on the ground are unavoidable, but if we stay close to the walls, we can get around most of the snakes," she explained, frowning deeply as she tried to focus her mind and force out the haziness that was beginning to cloud it. "I'm ready whenever you are, JJ."

"I don't think I'll ever be ready," JJ murmured in admission, chancing a quick glance at Emily beside her. "But now is probably as close as I get."

"I hear ya. We'll be fine," Emily assured, taking JJ's hand into her own, interlacing their fingers. "Follow my lead and stay close to me."

The two agents moved until they reached the threshold. Emily tried to clear their path by slowly sweeping away the shards of glass in front of them using the side of her foot, pushing them further into the room to reveal the grey cement floor underneath, but the jingling noise seemed to have spooked the occupants as the hisses and rattles became louder and more sinister. A few of the snakes were drawn to the noise and began to glide towards it, several others unwound themselves from their curled up position and the rest simply lifted their head up in curiosity, raising about a third of their body length along the way to expose their yellowish belly.

All the movements made Emily freeze hers immediately. At the same time, she felt JJ's hold on her hand tightened and she didn't pause to squeeze back.

Fearful of riling up the slithering creatures even more, Emily decided to forgo clearing their path, which she came to realize was a time-consuming hassle anyway, and just put a foot on top of the carpet from hell. She regretted her action instantly as it served her a painful reminder of the tender wound on the underside of her foot that had yet to heal when a sharp edge pierced right into it. She bit down on her lower lip to keep herself from crying out, but failed to keep a muffled groan from escaping.

"Emily, are you alright?" JJ asked in a whisper, having caught the stifled groan.

"I'm fine. I just stepped on a particularly nasty piece of glass. It's nothing," Emily replied dismissively, throwing her words over her shoulder as she gave the half-truth. Moving sideways with her back pressed flat to the wall behind, she took a couple more agonizing steps to free up some space for JJ. "Be careful, JJ, watch your step."

JJ nodded, sucking in a subtle deep breath, before taking her first step and set her foot down onto the layer of glass. She shut her eyes tight for a moment when she felt jagged edges cut and dug into her flesh. She found Emily looking at her worryingly when she opened her eyes. "I'm okay, Em. Let's keep moving."

Once Emily got the go-ahead, she carried on, gripping onto JJ's hand tightly. They moved as fast as they could while keeping a keen eye on the snakes that were in their vicinity, about five to ten feet away, and another on the glass-covered ground to avoid stepping on an extra pointy piece. The sound of glass fragments crackling and popping beneath their feet was a constant as they moved, adding to the noises already filling the room.

"Emily, are you sure you're okay? Your foot is bleeding," JJ stated, looking down at the trail of red blots Emily left behind. "You keep hissing in pain too. Don't think I didn't hear it."

"Yes, JJ, I'm sure. And I'm not hissing in pain, I'm... Trying to communicate with them," Emily finished lamely, shifting her body at the second turning point before stopping abruptly.

"I'm pretty certain you're joking, but if you're serious, I think it's best that you stop. They're starting to make a move on us," JJ said, her breath bated. The incessant pounding of her heart was almost drowning out the increasingly piercing hisses and rattles that struck off the four walls into her ears. She was tucked in the corner with Emily next to her, just one wall away from the door, as a couple of snakes nearby slid purposefully up towards them, coming to a halt an arm's length away. Panic set in within her; it clogged off her airway and sent frissons throughout her whole body. Yanking on Emily's arm, she asked, "Emily... Why aren't you moving? They're closing in..."

"I know, hang on a sec," Emily forced out, trepidation gripping her voice. Her eyes were locked on a third one that was a feet diagonally ahead of her, effectively blocking her way. It stuck its tongue out at her, hissing threateningly. In one swift movement, it raised its body and thrust its arrowed head forward.

"Ohmygod," she gasped, jumping backwards instinctively, pushing herself into JJ, who nearly got the wind knocked out of her. Emily's heart rate went through the roof at that single moment. The snake's nose missed her by a mere half inch before it jerked its head back and turned, gliding away as if nothing had happened.

"That was close," she breathed out, wiping the beads of sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. "C'mon, we're almost there," she urged as adrenaline coursed in her veins, numbing the pain in her foot.

JJ followed closely behind with two pesky snakes hot on her heels. She winced every now and again when the edges of the glass fragments poked and sliced through her skin as she rushed her steps, producing a train of fresh blood. The scent of it wafted into the air, allowing the snakes to get a smell of her when they flapped their tongues, whetting their appetite.

"Emily..." she called anxiously, warm tears springing to her eyes. They had their backs against the wall right next to the door while Emily struggled to get the key into the keyhole with her trembling hand after she had taken it off the knob. "Can you please hurry? I think one of them is going to come on to me..."

As soon as JJ finished, the one closest to her lifted itself and hissed, opening its mouth wide to show her its razor-sharp fangs with saliva, and possibly venom, dripping from them. "Emily!"

"I got it! I got it," Emily exclaimed, grimacing at the death grip JJ had on her hand. She quickly unlocked the door once the key was in place and rotated the knob, pushing the door open. Carefully poking her head past the door frame, she sneaked a peek at its interior to make sure it was safe enough for them to enter. What she saw made her brain stall, but she snapped herself out of the stupor in time and kicked start it once more.

"Alright, the doorway's clear. Let's go!" Emily yelled, bolting into the next room, tugging JJ along behind her. She barely managed to pull a yelping JJ out when the snake lunged its entire length towards them before she slammed the door shut in its face, hearing a loud thud coming from the other side of it. She turned to JJ straight off and brushed away strands of blonde hair masking her face, asking in haste, "JJ, you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? Did you get bitten?"

"I'm okay, Em, I'm fine," JJ replied breathlessly, bobbing her head. She leaned her rear against the closed door for support and bent over forward, placing her palms on top of her knees while she caught her breath. "Other than a few cuts on my feet, I'm pretty much still intact. How about you?"

"Just... Peachy," Emily said sarcastically, imitating JJ's stance. Irritated by the throbbing pain on the bottom of her foot, she brought it up and rested it on her other thigh to inspect her wound. "Shit," she cursed when she noticed its gangrenous state and how deep it was.

"Emily..." JJ murmured, her watery eyes wandering about the dim room. "Are you seeing this?"

"See what?" Emily asked distractedly. When she received no answer, she flicked her gaze towards JJ and followed her line of sight. Comprehension dawned on her once she came upon the mess in the center of the room. "Oh... Yeah, I got a glimpse before. It looks so much worse now that I'm staring at them."

"It's ridiculous. How the hell does he expect us to get through them?" JJ questioned harshly, her frustration bubbling to the surface.

In the middle of the third room, exposed wires and cables hanging from the ceiling beams were tangled up to form an elaborate web, missing the ground by a few inches and extending all the way till the next door at the end. They obscured the light shining down from the lone ceiling lamp, making the room seemed a great deal darker and smaller compared to the last two. Even with the poor lighting, red stains were apparent on the electrical lines, no doubt blood of the previous victims.

Altogether, they created a drab, deathly ambiance that made JJ feel as though she was suffocating.

"I don't think he does, JJ," Emily answered in a low, somber voice as she slowly set her foot down. "That's the whole point of this; of everything."

"And we don't have a choice, do we?" JJ asked quietly, directing most of her strength on regulating her breathing. They had only narrowly escaped the first two traps the unsub set and she hated to think that there were five more awaiting them behind the doors, provided, of course, they survive the present one.

"Well, we can either go back and risk being devoured by ravenous snakes or move forward and risk being electrocuted by a web of bare wires and cables," Emily offered, shrugging nonchalantly. Her tone, snappy. "So there, which one sound better to you?"

JJ tilted her head to the side to look at Emily with her eyebrows dipped, whether in annoyance or surprisal or a mixed of both, she didn't know. She was starting to lose touch with herself, that much she knew, and if her sudden outburst was anything to go by, so was Emily. "It was rhetorical, Em, and that wasn't even what I was asking."

"I know, JJ. I'm sorry. I don't know what got over me," Emily sighed, rubbing her face roughly with her hands afterward.

"I do... Hey, stop it. You're going to rub your face off," JJ scolded softly as she pushed herself off the door and moved to stand in front of Emily, grabbing her wrists. "Don't beat yourself up over it, okay? Emily? Emily, open your eyes and look at me," she ordered. Her tone of voice was firm, but it had that bit of gentleness to it as well.

It didn't take long for sad, apologetic brown eyes opening to meet concern, understanding blue ones. JJ released a heavy breath before saying, "this place... It's getting to us. It's wearing us down. I'm not talking just physically, it's affecting our mental state too. We're losing ourselves, Emily. We've to keep it together. We have to keep to each other, do you hear me?"

"Yeah..." Emily nodded wearily, then rested her forehead on JJ's shoulder, letting her eyes flutter close as JJ ran her fingers soothingly through her hair. She was tired, frustrated and not to mention, weak, due to the amount of blood she had lost earlier. She knew she would have to gather herself up soon, but for now, for a few moments at least, she would just give herself a break, to prepare for everything that had yet to come.


	8. Chapter VIII

**A/N: **Once again, thanks a lot to everyone who left all those wonderful reviews! The same goes to everyone who's reading this story!

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><p><em>"All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?"<em> ~ Immanuel Kant

**CHAPTER VIII**

"Talk to us, Baby Girl. What did you find out about Joseph Mullins?" Morgan asked, directing his words to the telephone sitting in the middle of a round wooden table. He and the rest of the team, plus the Sheriff, were standing around it in the conference room in the local police station.

The atmosphere was tense and uneasy. Emily and JJ had now been gone for over four hours.

"Oh, aplenty, my comrades," Garcia's bubbly voice came through the speaker. "Joseph Mullins, born Joseph Darren Mullins on June 13th, 1975 to George Mullins and one Claudia Haynes. He was a regular kid growing up; attended the local schools, played in the little league, got average grades. That was, of course, until his mother decided to up and leave them father and son, filing for a divorce when he was 12 years-old. Needless to say, everything went down like a slippery slope from there."

"Yeah, the wife leaving hit George real hard," Sheriff Sheridan chimed in. "He sank into depression after that and ran his entire building company to the ground. Had to sell everything he owned to pay off the debts and investors."

"Not his manor though, he didn't sell that," Hotch said matter-of-factly. His face was stoic as always even with the upsurge of anxiety on the inside.

"No, George couldn't bear to sell it," the Sheriff replied. "It was built right around the time his business was prospering. He said it was a monument of his success, to sell it would mean he'd failed."

"What happened after, Garcia?" Hotch questioned, eager to keep things moving.

"Okay, so after the divorce was finalized, poor old George tried to rebuild his construction company, yes, pun intended there, and teenage Joseph dropped out of high school to help out daddy dearest, but sadly, it never took off and they went bust," Garcia paused for a couple of moments to enhance the effect of her dramatic telling before adding, "again."

"So in order to support himself and his father, Joseph Mullins took up a job as a construction worker and it was on site a few days ago where he met our latest victim, Shelley Dawson," Rossi said as he pointed towards a photo of a smiling Shelley pinned on the evidence board next to him. "She was the project manager of the café, went down to check on the progress and caught his eyes."

Morgan shook his head. "You know, I get that part, but it doesn't account for the rest of the four missings. There's no similarity between the five women in terms of facial features, hair color, physique, background, job and anything else I can think of. We don't know how he's choosing them, how he's abducting them and what he did with them afterward."

"We're missing something," Hotch murmured, talking more to himself than to the others. He had his arms folded across his chest with one hand scratching lightly on his chin, striking a thoughtful pose.

"Garcia, what about the father? What happen to him? Is he living in the manor with his son?" Reid asked consecutively, having stayed silent for the most part of the meeting to process his rampant thoughts.

"Hang on a sec, Boy Genius, and let me work my mag- Oh lord..." Garcia breathed out, her emotions discernible through the tremble in her voice. "Hospital records indicate that George Mullins got into a car accident while driving on the interstate en route to Douglas County roughly two years ago and it left him paralyzed from neck down. He was released three months later. Joseph Mullins signed the discharge papers."

"No one has seen George since he got discharged and Joseph took him back home. Whenever I asked Joseph how his father's doing, he'd shrug and say he's doing just fine," Sheriff Sheridan shared.

"Erm, guys, what if George Mullins is the one who started all of this?" Reid said, his eyebrows knitting together as the gears in his head turned. "It makes sense."

"How does that make any sense, Reid?" Morgan asked incredulously. "Haven't you heard what Garcia said? That guy is paralyzed from neck down. He's immobile."

"Yeah, I heard her, I know that," Reid defended himself as he hurried around the table to the evidence board. "What I'm trying to say is George Mullins _started _all of this, before the accident happened. You see, after his wife left him and his son, his business crumbled and his company collapsed. He managed to put himself back together and set up another company, but when that failed, it's most possible he snapped. He blamed his wife for causing all of his failures and started to abduct women who reminded him of her."

"Reid, do I also have to remind you that all five women went missing in the last two months?" Hotch asked, arching an eyebrow at the young man.

"Of course not, Hotch, I'm fully aware of the fact," Reid replied quickly. "But Garcia mentioned that George Mullins was driving into another county when his car crashed. He could have been on his way there to hunt for his next target."

"It's a pretty smart move," Rossi commented, bobbing his head. "Crossing jurisdictions lines, taking women from different counties to avoid detection."

"Exactly," Reid said with a hint of excitement, tipping on his toes a bit. "After the accident, it's likely that Joseph took over his father. He was able to stay under the radar using the same method, but something happened two months ago, which caused him to lose control and completely abandon taking precaution measures; he began to abduct women within Black Forest. Look," he gestured towards the evidence board. "We have five missings up here on the board with seemingly nothing similar between them. I think it isn't so much as the similarity between these women as the similarity to his mother, Claudia Haynes. He may have started out abducting women who resemble his mother, which I'm guessing was what his father did, but you have to keep in mind that the unsub is rapidly devolving, so the similarity he saw in these women can be as diminutive as the way they smile or toss their hair."

"So you're saying there are more missing women out there?" The Sheriff questioned, a look of a mix of disbelief and horror on his face.

Reid scrunched up his features and nodded tentatively. "I'm saying it's possible, yeah."

"Alright, Garcia, pull out missing persons records from the surrounding counties, go as far back as the late 1980s and see if any of them matches Claudia Haynes' appearance," Hotch ordered, then turned towards Reid. "You stay here and continue to work with Garcia. The rest of us will head off to the Mullins' manor. Emily and JJ have already been gone for more than four hours, so we can't afford to waste any more time. Let's go."

"Wait, what? What happened to Emily and JJ? Where are my girls? Why aren't they with you guys?" Garcia asked in a rush. Her panicky voice was almost buried under the commotion in the room. "Somebody better answer me quick or I'm gonna have a major freakout and somebody's gonna get hurt!"

"Baby Girl, we gotta go. Reid will explain everything to you," Morgan answered, before heading out the conference room, jogging to catch up to his team leader. "Hey, Hotch, wait up," he called out, coming to a stop when Hotch whirled around, impatience written all over his stern face. "Do you really think Joseph Mullins is our unsub? Reid's theory sounds like it fits, but the important thing we have to remember is it's simply a theory. What we're doing seems a lot to me like we're trying to make Joseph Mullins the unsub when all of us know that a few dozen other construction workers saw Shelley Dawson the day she disappeared. Any one of them could have easily abducted her and the other missing women."

"Morgan, I don't have the time to argue with you. I understand where you're coming from, but you can't overlook the fact that Emily and JJ went to his house for a statement four hours ago and aren't back yet. Right now, all I want to do is find the two of them. If we're wrong and they are perfectly fine, then we run off a couple hours of our time, but if we're right and Joseph Mullins _is _the unsub, I can only hope we don't get there too late," Hotch snapped, hastily walking away immediately after.

Morgan let out a frustrated breath, angling to his left to face Rossi, who lingered beside him. "Rossi, I want to find Emily and JJ too, as much as any of you, maybe even more so, b-"

"Derek," Rossi interrupted. "Hotch is right. At this point, we have to assume that Joseph Mullins is our unsub. If he's not, all we did is waste a trip. It's not like you've got somewhere else you need to be, right?"

"Just to go get Emily and JJ back here safe," Morgan mumbled, before he hurried to the exit along with Rossi.

- - - v - - -

"There seems to be less of a mess on the right," JJ observed, pointing towards the particular area of bare, tangled wirings. "A little more blood, but less of a mess."

"Yeah, it does look like the best way to get across," Emily replied, her voice strained as she bent down to look beyond the web. Her eyes traced a potential escape route, mapping it out in her head. "It's gonna be tricky though. We have to be extremely careful."

"Can just one touch really kill us?" JJ asked, a deep frown on her forehead. She wriggled uncomfortably under her damp apparels when a new wave of dread and fear washed over her. The sight of copper lines tinted with different shades of blood offering no comfort.

"I sure hope not," Emily answered after a moment of hesitation, having never considered the possibility. She then glanced around, studying the various sizes of the cables and wires. "There are some thicker than the others, my guess is they carry a larger current, but it's still better to be safe and avoid coming in contact with any of them than get fried unnecessarily."

"Funny, seeing how we're both sweating like pigs," JJ said, before looking down at her own body. "All of my clothes and pants are sticking onto me."

"It's illogical," Emily muttered thoughtfully. "The phrase, I mean, about how we're sweating like pigs," she clarified, when JJ gave her a confused look. "Pigs have ineffective sweat glands, which make it impossible for them to actually sweat."

"Huh, that sounds like something Reid would say," JJ remarked in a light tone, chuckling at the fond memories of Reid sprouting random facts and statistics with that enthusiasm of his. It quickly died down however, at the thought of her not able to see him and the rest of the team again. Her cheerful face fell at that instant and she released a soft sigh, her shoulders slumping. "I wonder if they're looking for us."

"I'm sure they are, JJ," Emily replied with a confident nod, knowing precisely who 'they' referred to. "And I'm sure they won't stop until they find us. Unfortunately, we don't know how long it'll take before they do, thus, the best thing for us to do right now is to try and get to the exit."

JJ nodded in concord, following behind Emily and started to move to the right hand side of the clutter in the center of the dingy room. There was a sense of foreboding that gripped her like it was attempting to stop her from advancing, its hold strengthening by the second. She could feel her chest tighten unpleasantly with each step, causing her breathing to become heavy and ragged, but she simply flexed her jaw muscles and clenched her fists, cussedly ignoring it, stubbornly continuing forward. This was not the time to give in.

The sound of their bare foot padding on the cement floor not included, the two agents found themselves surrounded by an oppressive silence.

"Be careful, Emily," JJ said once she saw the brunette put one of her feet over a cable, which hung about a few inches off the ground. Biting down nervously on the inside of her cheek, she watched restlessly as Emily bent her body down to a ninety degrees angle to steer clear of one hanging above her. Her breath hitched when Emily slowly lifted her other foot over, keeping her body bowed all the while, and brought her entire self into the massive web.

Just as Emily placed her foot over another cable in her way, a firework of electricity burst near the top of her head in a loud blast to send sparks flying in every direction. "Oh, fuck!" She cursed as she ducked her head down into her shoulders, only barely managing to keep the rest of her body subdued as sparks decimated around her once they hit the ground.

JJ yelped and sprang back a step at the sudden explosion of energy, shielding her head with her hands instinctively. "Emily!" She cried out the moment she recovered from her scare, closing the distance between them with haste.

"JJ, no! Stay where you are!" Emily yelled when she saw JJ rushing towards her from the corner of her eye, effectively stopping her in her tracks. "There's not enough space for the both of us in here, you're only going to hurt yourself. I need you to stay out for now," she instructed, a finality in her tone. Catching a glimpse of the stricken expression on JJ's face, she softened her voice and said, "don't worry, okay? I'm fine. I'm not hurt. Wait till I'm about three-quarter of the way through before coming in, alright?"

"Okay, okay..." JJ breathed out, sniffling. Her eyes wet with tears. She ran both of her hands through her mass of messy blonde hair exasperatingly, trying in vain to calm herself down.

Emily nodded to herself when she heard JJ's nearly inaudibly response, unable to muster up any words. Her legs and upper body were beginning to quiver uncontrollably due to the prolonged period in her awkward posture. To make matters worse for her, the bullet graze wound on her waist felt inflamed. The heat was becoming increasingly unbearable, causing her head to spin and her stomach to drop. Aware that she couldn't stay in her position any longer, she clamped both sets of her teeth together and with a grunt, bent even lower and moved her body across a couple bundles of thick wires above her, then straightened herself up. She let out a sigh of relief as her tense muscles started to loosen up.

Emily knew it was far from over though; she was now completely penned in the entanglement with her nausea nowhere near easing. As a matter of fact, it was intensifying. She could feel it overwhelming her senses, numbing her body, clouding her mind. She forced herself to make a conscious effort not to move and allowed her eyes to flutter close, hoping her wooziness would subside soon, knowing it would definitely be the end of her if she fainted right there.

JJ looked on apprehensively, holding on to her breath, waiting for any sort of movement from Emily. She had no idea why Emily was simply standing unmoving in the midst of everything. It certainly didn't help lessen her worry that she couldn't see Emily's face, since her back was facing her.

"Emily?" She called out tentatively. Her heartbeat picked up its pace when she received no answer, no acknowledgment, nothing whatsoever. "Emily, why aren't you moving? Are you alright?" She asked, raising her volume by a few decibels.

Silence.

JJ's heart was now pounding violently against her chest. She was torn between remaining where she was, outside the tangled web, like Emily had told her to and doing the exact opposite. Her tear-filled eyes were fixed on Emily as she bounced anxiously on her feet. She froze on the tip of her toes when she thought she saw Emily move. Was her eyes playing tricks on her or was Emily really swaying?

Before she could even start to mull over on the question, she heard a soft, dragged out groan. "Emily?"

"JJ..." Emily whispered as she struggled to find the strength to open her eyes, to keep still, to stay on her feet. "I don't feel so good... I think... I'm gonna..."

JJ's eyes widened in pure horror. "No, Emily!"


	9. Chapter IX

**A/N: **Thanks so, so much for the reviews! I'm sorry for the delay of this posting. It turned out to be trickier to write than I thought.

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><p><em>"When the going gets tough, the tough get going." <em>~ Joseph P. Kennedy

**Chapter IX**

Emily's legs gave out below her body. No matter how hard she willed herself to remain standing on her feet, she simply couldn't find the balance nor strength she so desperately needed. Everything around her was spiraling out of control and everything inside her was churning. She went knees first down onto the solid concrete ground before dumping her entire body weight on the heels of her feet, using every bit of consciousness she had left to stay upright. The dizziness would pass soon. It had to.

JJ was in motion the second saw Emily's knees buckle; putting her foot over cables, crouching down low to keep clear of wires above. Her breathing was shallow and bated at times, heavy and rapid at others. She was moving through the web as fast as she possibly could with adrenaline as her fuel and instinct as her guide. She couldn't care less about her own safety, about her own life. At that moment, the only person's safety and life she cared about belong to Emily. It didn't matter in any case as both of their lives were tied together and now laid in her hands. For both of their sakes, she needed to make it to Emily and she needed to make it to her in time, to do otherwise would mean the death of Emily and that, would be the death of her. If she was still alive then.

In her drive to reach Emily, JJ was relying on her sixth sense to maneuver through the entanglement. It seemed like the best method, the quickest way. The problem with it was, she wasn't seeing with her eyes, but with her heart, and her heart was set on Emily. She knew she was close to the brunette, very nearly within touching distance, she merely had to turn her bent body and stretch out her hand. She did exactly that, but she failed to take note of a bare conducting line dangling just off to her side. Under a different circumstance, she would have definitely caught sight of it from her peripheral vision, but she was so focused on Emily that she had turned a blind eye to everything else. It didn't help that the adrenaline coursing through her veins was exaggerating her movements in such limited space.

As JJ turned, the rather big sweeping motion she did with her arm caused it to come directly into contact with the live copper wire and instantly, she felt a jolt of electricity ripped through her sweaty skin down to the muscles beneath. She let out a noise somewhere between a hiss and a moan at the sharp pain, jerking her hand back in shock and springing her upper body back up in reflex. It was a bad move, a near-fatal one. She had bent her body down to avoid the thick bundle of cables hanging above her and as she sprung up, her back met it full-on.

"ARGH!" JJ cried out loud as the electricity scorched her wet clothes to her skin and shock wave rippled throughout her whole body, sending her muscles into spasms. Her features contorted in excruciation as she crumbled down to one knee with a palm pressed flat on the cement floor to hold herself up, to keep herself steady amidst the involuntary jerks that broke out sporadically in various parts of her body. She was struggling to catch every breath, and with each one she took, she could smell and even taste the odor of burned clothes, and perhaps burned flesh, that was heavy in the already musty air. She was suffocating; the cables and wires around her might as well be wrapped around her neck.

Sweat was surfacing from her forehead. Tears were welling up in her eyes. Her entire body was humming, in an unpleasant way. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to give up. What had she done to deserve this, JJ didn't know. She felt helpless, hopeless as the strength in her gradually drained away.

Then, came a heavy whisper. "JJ..."

Her head snapped to the source of the noise in an instant – it was Emily. JJ felt the fire within her reignite at once, spurring her on. "God, Em... I'm coming. Hold still, Emily, I'm coming!" She shouted hoarsely. It was easier said than done though, even with the fact that she was only about an arm's length away. She had to find a way out of the position she had gotten herself into before she could get to Emily. One of her legs was outstretched behind her and the other bent at the knee just below her body, in between them was a blood-tinted cable with hardly any insulation. As she wracked her brain, she chanced a glance at Emily, who stayed motionless, and prayed to every deity she knew of to let Emily stay that way, or at least until she could get there.

JJ squeezed her eyes shut in frustration, tears escaping from the corners of her eyes; she was so close, yet so far.

Emily faintly heard a voice calling her name, telling her to hold still, but they were meaningless words to her. She could feel the control over her body, over her mind slipping through her grasp. Numbness was beginning to creep up her calves to her thighs, spreading throughout both of her legs. She didn't know long she could keep herself up straight, she didn't even know the reason why she was doing it anymore, only that she had to.

"Emily," JJ uttered softly once she was positioned right behind the other agent. Somehow, she had managed to twist and turn her way out of her previous plight. She quickly placed one hand on Emily's back to brace her slumping form and one hand on the back of Emily's head to prevent it from falling backwards, her wrist hovering dangerously close above a wire. "Emily, talk to me... Please just say something, anything. I need to know if you can hear me."

Gibberish. That was all Emily could hear – a train of gibberish. Her world had become a tornado, spinning at top speed with no indication of stopping. She couldn't hold on any longer. Her eyelids were drooping and her eyeballs were rolling back into her head. She felt as if she was tumbling head over heels when in truth, her body was just slouching sideways. Regardless, she had let herself go.

"No, Emily, stay up! Stay up!" JJ yelled in a panic, only for her words to fall on deaf ears. She tried to support Emily's upper body by moving her hands under her arms, but the brunette's dead weight was simply too heavy for her to handle. "Emily!"

Darkness was upon her and Emily welcomed it with open arms, but when she was about to be swallowed whole by it, she was zapped out of her bleary state, and literally so. She was halfway on her trip down onto the ground when her limped arm came into contact with an unsheathed cable. The shock of electricity was instantaneous; it charged through the damp fabric of her clothing to her skin, effectively searing them together. Her body shot upright and her eyes flew open straightaway, crying aloud in pain.

JJ was incapacitated as she watched Emily tipped to the side, towards the goddamn cable. She could only scream and wail for Emily to get up, which she did in the end, albeit in a way she least expected. She was in no stead to complain though, hurriedly putting her hands on Emily's back to support her. "Emily," she called out for the umpteenth time, hot tears sliding down her cheeks as she waited anxiously for a response of any sorts.

Emily was still in a semi-haze as the shock wore off, but compared to before, everything around her seemed so much clearer and other than the blistery sensation on her arm, she was in far less discomfort. Her mind was even lucid enough to recognize JJ's voice coming from behind, just that it needed a while to process the meaning of her words. It was almost like her brain had a reboot.

After emitting a few groans and grunts, she managed to find her own voice at last and whispered, "JJ..."

"Oh, Em..." JJ sighed in relief, unable to continue speaking as a tidal wave of emotions overwhelmed her. She closed her eyes and hung her head, letting out a couple sobs of joy, but she caught herself before she got too emotional. "How are you feeling?"

"I feel sick," Emily breathed out, leaning back on JJ's hands as she waited for the carousel in her head to come to a halt. "Didn't I... I thought I told you to stay out," she carried on feebly, a small frown working its way onto her sweat-covered forehead.

"You did, but I couldn't. Not with what was happening to you," JJ replied, shifting slightly in her half-squat stance as it became increasingly uncomfortable. She was hedged in a tight space with wirings suspended in every direction. She knew they would have to move, preferably sooner rather than later, but she was reluctant to rush Emily for fear of her fainting spell reoccurring.

Emily nodded tiredly. "Are you... Are you hurt?" She asked worryingly, vaguely remembering hearing cries earlier.

"Nothing I can't take," JJ answered enigmatically. She allowed a tiny smile to grace her features, touched by the other woman's concern. Her smile fell from her face once she glanced down towards her arm and noticed a nasty pinkish-red scar etched onto her skin. She could only imagine how awful the one on her back looked. Movements she felt on the palms of her hands snapped her out of her thoughts. "Emily, what do you think you're doing?" She questioned in a harsh tone, her wide eyes staring in disbelief at Emily's slow-moving figure. "Stop, you need to stay still and rest! Your body's weak right now."

"It's my legs... They're getting numb. I need to stand up to get the blood flowing," Emily explained as she moved to rise on her feet, her voice drawn and quiet. "And this isn't exactly a good place for resting, JJ... Considering we can actually die in here which... I almost did."

"You wanna know why? Because you didn't rest enough after you got shot, Emily, that's why," JJ berated, allowing her hands to slip from Emily's back before passing one over her face exasperatingly.

"I know, JJ... I'm sorry," Emily said, tilting her head back carefully for a glimpse at the blonde, whose body was almost curled up into a ball. Stabs of guilt penetrated her heart; all through these times, she only wanted to shield JJ from harm, to be the rock for her to lean on, but so far, she had caused JJ nothing besides pain – both physical and emotional. It was quite the irony. "I'm sorry for putting you through all these... I'm sorry for needing you to save my ass... Twice."

"There better not be a third," JJ huffed, her puffy eyes trained on Emily's bloody feet, which were covered with shallow gashes.

Emily bit down on her lower lip. She knew it was impossible for her to offer an assurance so, she decided to ignore it altogether and change the subject, putting her mind into the situation at hand. "I think... I think we should move, and before you say anything... I'm feeling a bit better, but I'm not sure whether I can keep at that. So, if you want us to get out of here... We have to do it now, JJ."

"I don't know, Emily," JJ moaned. "I'm really worried about you."

"I'm really worried about you too, JJ... You can't be comfortable in your position, and don't try to deny it," Emily replied. "I'm gonna move now... Okay?" She didn't wait for a response however, starting on the escape route she had previously mapped out in her head as soon as the words left her mouth, leaving no room for protest. She could feel her strength waning again and she wasn't going to waste anymore time; she had to make every ounce left count.

JJ opened her mouth to respond, but Emily was already on the move. She sighed quietly, before following in Emily's footsteps as they made their way through the web in measured motions.

After what felt like an endless journey and countless amount of close shaves, Emily was finally within reach of the silver key. As she carefully took it off of the gold-plated doorknob it was hanging from, a blast of electricity exploded somewhere behind her, which was closely followed by a piercing scream that raised the hair on the back of her neck. She ducked down on instinct, her fist clenching on the key in her hand. "JJ!" She exclaimed, fear apparent in her voice. Her heart banged with full force against her tight chest when silence answered her desperate call. "JJ, answer me!"

"I'm okay, Em... I'm okay," was the breathy reply that came.

"My god, Jennifer... You scared me," Emily chided, an annoyed expression in place even though JJ couldn't actually see it. Inserting the key, she unlocked and opened the door without any hassle, but to get through it was a completely different story.

The entrance was barred with cables and wires, leaving only a gap of the size of a window in the middle for them to squeeze past. Emily released a shaky breath, bracing herself mentally before slowly putting a leg through the hole and down onto the ground on the other side. Her bare foot stepped on something hard and oddly-shaped, but she paid no mind to it. She grabbed firmly onto the doorframe for support as she snaked her upper body into the opening, then tardily retracting her other leg. Relief flooded her entire being; she was out at long last.

Emily quickly spun back to the door when she heard a strangled groan, directing her attention to JJ who had half her body through the gap. "Be careful, JJ... Here, I got you," she assured, wrapping her arm around JJ's waist to haul her out before slamming the door shut. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I think so," JJ breathed out, bobbing her head. She placed her palms on her knees as she tried to catch a breather, inhaling deep breaths of fresh air. It wasn't fresh per se, but it was definitely much fresher than the air in the previous room.

"Hey, JJ," Emily called out distractingly as her eyes roamed around the fourth room, accessing the state of it with her jaw hanging. It was rather spacious and pretty much empty, except for the infinite number of keys scattered all over the cement floor. There were blood smeared on the walls as well, with some areas visibly darker than the rest. "I can't even begin to describe how crazy this is... It's going to take us forever to find the right one."

"We'll deal with it later, Em. Right now, you need to rest," JJ said, tugging Emily back towards the closed door and sat her down. "After what we've gone through, we both could really use a break," she continued with a sigh. Her entire body ached from having strained her muscles and twisted her joints. As weariness seized control of her, she plopped herself down beside Emily and leaned her shoulder against the door.

"Yeah, I know... But come to think about it, doesn't this feel a little too easy compared to the others? Look at these tracks on the floor," Emily nodded towards the aforesaid thin black rails they were sitting on. She tucked her legs beneath her body to get a clearer look at them. Each track was spaced about an inch apart from each other. She ghosted the tip of her middle finger along the cool, abrasive surface of one of their borders and for some unknown reason, she felt a chill went down her spine at the same time, which was swiftly followed by a wave of goosebumps tickling on her arms.

It was uncanny.

She quickly withdrew her hand and cleared away the lump in her throat, focusing her mind back to what she had intended to say. "There are two running across us here and another couple of them right along the other side of the room. They're meant for something. The question is what."

"It's hard to say, since there isn't a lot of other stuff in here, save for the keys of course. They're aplenty," JJ replied pragmatically with a tinge of irritation. She winced when she stressed one of the many sore muscles in her lower back by accident while she pushed herself off the door. Massaging the particular area with her hand, she scooched nearer to Emily, leaning forward to inspect the tracks. "By the looks of them, all four tracks seem to lead to th-"

_Vroom._

It lasted for a mere second, two at the most, but without doubt, they felt the ground vibrate beneath them in company of a low, rough rumble. Unlike their hearts, which were pumping much faster in their chests after the incident, the two of them were scared stiff. Apprehension held them tight in its grasp, stubbornly refusing to let go.

"What the hell was that?" Emily asked in a whisper.

JJ shrugged, or at least she thought she did. "I don't know, but it definitely felt like the ground just shift-"

_Vroom._

It happened yet again. This time however, the ground didn't vibrate as much and the low, rough rumble came in the form of a smoother graveling noise accompanied by the sound of the keys jingling and scraping across on the floor.

"Did you hear that?" Emily questioned, the tremble in her voice unmistakable. "It's like... It's like the keys just... Moved."

JJ could barely hear Emily as she spoke, because her mind was consumed by the horrific conclusion she reached once she connected the dots in her head. Suddenly, everything just clicked, everything just made sense. The keys on the floor, the blood on the wall, the rumble and vibration, the large jars sitting on the metal ledge back where they had woken up. She remembered their content – blood with bits and chunks of matter she couldn't identify, but now, she knew exactly what they were.

"I don't think we've got forever, Emily. The walls..." JJ murmured as tears of fear prickled her wide eyes. "They're closing in on us."


	10. Chapter X

**A/N: **Thanks x infinity to everyone who wrote those wondrous reviews, everyone who is reading this story. I'm completely blown away by the response, so I dearly hope I don't disappoint any of you! I sincerely apologize for this improbably late update. My internet went bonkers and it almost drove me to bash my head against the wall. Huh, and speaking of wall...

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><p><em>"Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!"<em> ~ Charles Dickens

**Chapter X**

"Just how far is this place?" Morgan asked impatiently, tossing a quick glance to the side. He shifted around in the driver seat as restlessness swept over his body, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel every so often, trying in vain to find the satisfying positions for his hands to settle on. "We've been on this road for almost forty-five minutes."

"The Sheriff says it normally takes about an hour and a half, but the circumstance is different for us. We don't have the luxury of daylight, it's really dark out there," Hotch replied, his voice calm and controlled, his expression dark and determined, a stark contrast to the agitation that Morgan was showing. He was in the passenger seat of the SUV with one hand grasping the grab handle above the window to keep himself steady on the bumpy ride as the vehicle zipped through the shadows of darkness and silhouettes of nature that surrounded it.

The two of them were trailing the Sheriff and his deputy who drove in their cruiser in front of them, leading the way to Mullins' manor, while Rossi rode alone in another SUV behind them, following close.

"So what? You're telling me it's gonna take another forty-five minutes for us to get there?" Morgan questioned incredulously, his volume raised to unleash his slew of emotions. "That's unacceptable, Hotch!"

Hotch turned sharply to face Morgan. His forehead was creased with a deep frown and his jaw was locked in place, exhibiting a look of disapproval at the fiery attitude Morgan was firing at him. In spite of that, he knew it wasn't intentional on Morgan's part. It wasn't done out of disrespect or insubordination, it was out of sheer frustration and overwhelming worry. Truth be told, he was experiencing the same upheaval of emotions, one that was a great deal more turbulent than Morgan's, and was battling hard within himself to rein them in and squelch them down. After all, he was the one who sent Emily and JJ to the manor, he was the one who practically handed Emily and JJ to the unsub.

It was unacceptable, indeed.

Letting the outburst from Morgan slide, Hotch brought the two-way radio he held in his hand to his mouth, pushing on the speaker button before saying, "Sheriff Sheridan, how much further are we?"

"I don't know, Agent Hotchner," came the immediate reply from the Sheriff. "I'm going as fast as I can, but I can hardly see the road ahead. The headlights aren't exactly much of a help."

"Give me an estimation then," Hotch said, his statement coming out more as a demand than a request. "How much longer is it gonna take us?"

The silence in the SUV was strained as the two agents waited for a response, stretching on uncomfortably until the Sheriff's hesitant voice broke through the radio. "Well, we should be nearing the second intersection. So, my guess is it'll be another twenty minutes, at least."

Hotch let out a heavy sigh, closing his eyes as he dropped his head. His shoulders slumped for a brief moment, but he quickly picked them back up. "Alright, Sheriff, but if you can, please try to speed it up. At this point, every second is crucial."

"I know how critical the situation is, Agent Hotchner. I'll do my best to crank it up a notch," the Sheriff answered reassuringly. "You can count on me."

"Thank you, Sheriff," Hotch replied curtly before his finger released the speaker button. He then set aside the radio, barely managing to suppress the urge to just chuck it against the dashboard. There was a sharp ache near the top his head beginning to make its presence known and in an effort to ward it off, he pinched firmly on the bridge of his nose, his features contorting into a grimace at the malaise that was spreading like wildfire in the pit of his stomach.

"Is he being serious? We don't have twenty minutes. Hell, I'm not even sure if we have another minute!" Morgan exclaimed, his knuckles turning white as his grip on the steering wheel tightened forcibly. The blood coursing through his veins was dangerously close to reaching its boiling point, and he felt as if he was about to explode at any second. In a moment of impulse, he pushed his foot down on the gas, accelerating until he nearly rear-ended the cruiser, stepping on the brakes at the last second.

"Morgan, you need to calm down!" Hotch yelled, shooting a death glare in Morgan's way, his heart beating a little faster in his chest after the incident. "We won't able to help Emily and JJ if we get ourselves into an accident, or worse, get ourselves killed!"

"We won't be able to help them at the speed we're going either, Hotch!" Morgan snapped back, meeting Hotch's glare with one of his own. "Who knows what the hell is happening to them right now!"

- - - v - - -

_Vroom._

"EMILY, HURRY UP!" JJ shrieked, her voice cracking towards the end. A waterfall of hot tears was streaming freely down from her puffy, red eyes to her flushed cheeks. "I CAN'T GET THIS DOOR TO OPEN!"

"I'M TRYING, JJ! I'M TRYING!" Emily screamed back without restraint, her hand quivering beyond control as she struggled to insert the key she had picked up among the silvery mass on the floor into the keyhole. With the key wedged tightly between her thumb and forefinger, she thrust it in the direction of the jagged opening, only for her shaking hand to direct the tip of the key away from its destination at the final moment and into the dead end that was the flat area around it, one desperate try after another, leaving flyspecks of white, nasty scratch marks everywhere on the once pristine gold-coated surface. It was laughable really, something as easy and effortless as sticking a key into a hole shouldn't be so difficult and laborious. Yet, it was.

That had been her story so far – her pathetic, panicky story.

Emily simply couldn't steady her trembling hand no matter how hard she wanted to, no matter how hard she tried. Her entire body was in hyper-drive; her heart was pumping at an immeasurable rate, her blood was heating up and her nerves were tumbling over the edge. To her, calming down was a ridiculous notion akin to a chicken flying.

_Vroom._

"ARGH! FUCK ME!" She cursed as her hand slipped once more and squandered precious seconds. Of all the things in the world to screw up doing, she couldn't quite believe she was screwing up on one of the simplest acts, if not, the simplest. To add salt to the wound, she had been doing it casually, repeatedly her whole life – a life that depended on her doing it right, doing it fast.

Thus far, she was failing wretchedly.

There had always been this ominous thought planted in the back of Emily's mind, that she would be killed in the line of duty. She had expected it to be rather typical though, either going out with a bang, literally, in a shootout or coming in second best in a fight-to-the-death with an unsub. She definitely never imagined she might perished in such horrific, torturous fashion; to be crushed to death and reduced to nothing more than a mix of blood, fragments and mush in a jar. But, somehow, it was happening.

Throughout, JJ's helpless cries and screams from the other end of the room rang loud in her ears. She forced herself to ignore them however, clenching her jaw to hold back the tears in her eyes and bear the twitches of her heart. She already had enough on her hands to worry about.

Two or three unsuccessful stabs later, Emily was at last able to slot the key into the keyhole and promptly turned it. "GODDAMMIT!" She swore through gritted teeth when the key struck a block. It was the wrong one, again. She wasted no time in pulling it out and swiftly tossed it across the room like the others before, couldn't care less where it ended up. Since there was no way to clearly separate the keys she had tried and those she hadn't, she figured to get the former as far away from her as possible. It didn't help that the silver color of the keys was almost blending in with the grey color of the cement floor, causing her vision to double.

Once she disposed of the previous key, Emily quickly crouched down and picked up another random one from the floor in a continual cycle. She was panting heavily and sweating profusely, exhausted in more ways than one. There were so many keys, yet so little time.

_Vroom._

The room was getting smaller and smaller. Keys were gathering in the nook where the walls and the floor converged, accumulating in numbers. The walls were gradually closing in, a few inches every few seconds. The wheels attached beneath them rolled on the black tracks, emitting a deep, low rumble that shook the ground as they propelled the walls forward.

At the speed they're going, it's only a matter of minutes before the walls on either side meet and crush whatever stood between them.

JJ couldn't contain the broken dam that was her tear-duct as tears flowed ceaselessly down her face. Her chest was constricting distressingly, forcing her to gasp hard for every breath of air as she rammed her shoulder into the solid, mahogany door with every ounce of strength she could muster, over and over, trying to force open the door that led back to the tangled, electrical web. It would serve as an alternative way out of the room for them, but that was only if she could get it to open.

Much to her dismay, there was no handle or knob on the door for her to pull on or twist. It was clearly designed by the unsub to accommodate the closing walls.

_Vroom._

"COME ON!" JJ yelled at the top her voice when the door held firm, furiously banging on it with the palm of her hand before switching back to using her shoulder. She didn't know how long she could keep going. The gravel noise reverberating into her ears was sending wave after wave of chills down her spine. The vibration beneath her bare foot was making her stomach churn and her body shudder. The growing pressure of the walls was squeezing air out from her lungs and pushing her that much closer towards insanity. She was experiencing the whole spectrum of negative emotions all at once, from fear and terror to anger and frustration to sodding hatred.

JJ had never despised anyone so intensely in her life as she did Joseph Mullins. She could feel her hatred for him seep deep into the core of her bones. She hated his hideous leather mask, his maniacal green eyes, his perverted mind, his stone cold of a heart and everything he was putting her through.

The rush of adrenaline in her blood numbed the pain in her shoulder as JJ continued to drive it into the closed door, taking all of her emotions out on it as she cried, grunted and screamed at the same time, but the door stubbornly refused to budge. She had already ran out of ideas. Earlier, she had kicked at it, pounded on it and at one point, she even tried to pry it open by slipping her slender fingers into the slit underneath the door. The method would never have worked, but rational thoughts had no place in her panic-struck mind, she just wanted to open the door in whichever way she could think of as desperate times called for desperate measures.

_Vroom._

JJ whipped her head around, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder to check on Emily's progress. To her fury, she noticed that the brunette was simply standing in front of the fifth door with her back to her, not picking up any of the keys from the floor and yet here she was, giving everything she had, trying her damnedest to get the door on her side to open.

"EMILY! WHY AREN'T YOU TRYING THE KEYS!" She screeched, her chest rising and falling rapidly, intemperately as she seethed, her heart pumping hot blood that rushed headlong up to her face, reddening it.

"JJ, I CAN'T!" Emily exclaimed, her voice choked as the tears she had been holding back, at last, became too much to handle and overflowed from her eyes, slithering down her cheeks, fusing with the beads of sweat from her temple before dripping off her chin. "THIS ONE'S STUCK!"

Upon hearing those dreaded words, JJ's whole body froze up when her hot blood ran cold at that instant, her eyes widened impossibly bigger in pure horror and her jaw suddenly found gravity irresistible. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN _IT'S STUCK_!" She shrieked once her shock started to drain away, her volume increasing from low and audible at first to high and roaring at the end.

_Vroom._

"I MEAN_ IT'S STUCK_! I CAN'T GET IT OUT!" Emily yelled as she jiggled on the key almost violently, trying to shake it loose, but her palm and the pads of her fingers were so incredibly sweaty, she simply couldn't get a proper, firm enough grip, causing the key to slip away from her after every couple of shakes. Panic was now full-blown as her body shook irrepressibly. Her heart was thumping fast and hard against her chest, her blood was racing through her veins, raising hairs on her skin along the way.

Emily was certain that if the key didn't come off the next second, she would go mad.

JJ rushed across the room, not at all registering the pain on the bottom of her foot as she stepped on the jagged edges of the keys on the floor recurrently, wanting to see the lodged key for herself. She stopped dead in her tracks, a few steps behind Emily, when it came into view, watching on with her mouth agape while Emily desperately attempted to get it out of the damn keyhole.

"This can't be happening..." She breathed out, her hands slowly finding their way into her messy blonde hair before seizing a whole bunch of them and pulled on them forcibly. "This can't be happening... It can't be... It can't be..." She continued whispering, backing away from Emily gradually.

'_I mean it's stuck! I can't get it out!_' The words kept on replaying themselves inside her head, screaming at her incessantly until the despairing reality of their situation finally sank down to the abyssal in her. Without a forethought, JJ spun on her heels and sprinted back across the room once more, ramming her dropped shoulder straight into the door she had been trying to open this entire time. There was a loud, sickening crack that sounded, but she couldn't tell if it was her shoulder or the door.

She was numbed. And the door remained steadfast.

_Vroom._

JJ shifted her body and slid her back down the door until her butt met the ground. She had her hands tangled in her hair, her watery, bloodshot eyes wide open, staring blankly into the space in front of her. Never had she ever felt so defeated in her life, one that was about to end soon.

"C'mon, Emily... C'mon..." Emily mumbled encouragingly to herself as she jiggled and yanked on the key with her trembling hand, doing her best to keep the amount of force she was exerting in check at the same time. The last thing she wanted to do was to break it, and with a semi-controlled, rickety tug, the key came loose at long last.

"I GOT IT, JJ! I GOT IT OUT!" She exclaimed in triumph, showing the dislodged key to the blonde seated on the far side of the room, but there was no acknowledgment from her whatsoever. "JJ!" She screamed her name again, but the response was the same. Nothing. She turned away from JJ and chanced a quick glance at the walls and realized, to her horror, they were less than five feet away. There wasn't an awful lot of time left, she estimated it would take roughly half a minute, a full one at the most, before the walls would close completely.

Letting out a guttural grunt of frustration, Emily tossed the cursed key in her hand away haphazardly and hunkered down to pick up another of the silver keys in haste. She couldn't afford to waste treasured time worrying about JJ right now.

_Vroom._

The intensity was becoming unbearable, the urgency nearly driving her wild. Emily was moving faster than she had ever did, her hands shaking worse than ever before. She was acutely aware that she had to find the right key before the wall block off the keyhole. Otherwise, all that remained would be an absolute excruciating wait for an absolute horrifying demise for both her and JJ.

"Please let this work... Please let this work..." She prayed aloud as she shakily tried to insert the key. Her vision getting more and more blurry as warm tears continued to sting her eyes, but it was still clear enough for her to notice the frantic movements from out of the corner of her eye. She turned away from her task at hand for the briefest of moments to see JJ on her knees, bending over, shuffling through the keys on the floor. "JJ! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

JJ didn't answer. She was far too occupied with riffling through the keys on the floor, trying to find it. Her hands picked up one key after another, examining them for a few seconds before tossing it away. She wasn't sure if she really did see it or it was her eyes playing cruel tricks on her, but there was nothing left to hold onto other than hope.

Hope that she had indeed, seen a marked key.

She had managed to catch a glimpse of the key, which had a black lining on the lower half of its body, before it got folded over into the heap around it and disappeared. The longer its image lingered in her mind, the more JJ was convinced she had seen it. The pressure from the wall in front of her forced her back, the pressure from the wall behind her drove her on. She had to find it. She must.

_Vroom._

The walls were now just a couple of feet away from them.

"EMILY!" JJ cried out, almost in exhilaration, as she scrambled to get up on her feet, her hand holding up the marked key she found, her heart blooming with renewed hope. "TRY THIS! TRY THIS ONE!" She shouted, waving the key in the air as she rushed over to Emily.

Emily threw away the one she had and took the key from JJ without hesitation. There was no time for doubt, for questioning. Her hand quivered as she tried to slot it into the keyhole, the tip of the key poked and scratched the area around the opening several times before she finally got it in and immediately turned it.

For the first time, the key rotated a full circle and with a cluck, the door came unlocked. The two agents stood rooted to their spots with their jaw hung loose and simply stared at the lock, amazed, relieved, stupefied, immobilized in the state of surprise and disbelief. Emily still had the key grasped tightly between her fingers for fear that if she let go, the door might somehow locked itself again.

"It's unlocked..." JJ breathed out as she blinked her way back down to earth. "The door's unlocked... Emily, the door's unlocked! EMILY, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR! OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR!" She exclaimed, shaking the other woman furiously.

Emily quickly snapped out of her stupor. It was hard not to, considering how JJ nearly blew out her eardrum by screaming right into her ear. She released her grip on the key straightaway and pushed the door open without second thought, without sparing a moment to take precaution.

The instant the door flew open, Emily's eyes widened with incredulity when she saw what's coming at them. "JAYJE, GET DOWN!"


	11. Chapter XI

**A/N: **I'm terribly sorry for having disappeared so wordlessly for three weeks to get my wonky internet fixed and upgraded. On the bright side, you won't have to wait long for the next update! Once again, thanks so much for leaving me such kind, wonderful words and staying with this story.

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><p><em>"<em>_Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it__." _~ Albert Smith

**Chapter XI**

"JAYJE, GET DOWN!" Emily shrieked, pushing the blonde backwards and at the same time, pulling her down to the ground as a colossal pendulum blade swung from the other room, through the door and straight towards them with a loud, bloodcurdling, hair-raising _whoosh_.

Fortunately, Emily had reacted a couple of seconds quicker and the razor-sharp, semi-circle-shaped blade swung past the top of her head while she was down bound, narrowly missing slicing it open.

The two of them flattened themselves on the front onto the keys-covered floor, side by side, with Emily lying half a body ahead of JJ. The jagged edges and odd protruding surfaces of the mass of keys beneath them dug non-penetratingly, but painfully, into their flesh, pressing hard against their bones.

Gritted teeth was the only sign of them registering the pain. They had their heads tilted up slightly, their shimmering eyes transfixed on the menacing, swinging blade, watching as it swung out of the room and for a brief moment, lingered unmoving in the air before it swung back in once more with extra gathered momentum.

_Vroom._

The walls were now mere inches away from the door frame. Time and space were running out, fast.

Emily kept her focus on the pendulum blade, seeing it swing in and out continuously, waiting with self-restrain for that precious window of opportunity, preparing herself to make a run for the opening when it came. It took about another few swings of the blade before she caught on to its rhythm, its timing, but the moment she did, she set her mind on making her move.

The next time the blade began to sweep out of the room, she seized the chance.

Emily pushed herself up, off the ground, onto her feet and dashed to the door. In the mad rush however, she accidentally slipped on a batch of damned keys near the doorway as her eyes widened at the sight of the blade started to come back down purposefully, threateningly towards her. She tripped over her own feet in an attempt to get her footing back, but she managed to recover just enough of it for her to pull off a dive through the door, to the side, just in time to get out of harm's way.

"UGH!" Emily grunted in anguish as she crashed down to the cement ground on her wounded side, hard and heavy. The pain was almost overpowering, she could have sworn she heard her ribs crack, if not for her overwhelming fear for JJ, who was still trapped in the room. She clenched her jaw shut to brave the pain and quickly turned around, crawling her way back to the side of the door, careful to keep herself away from the pendulum blade's swinging path.

_Vroom._

"COME ON, JJ! YOU CAN DO THIS!" Emily shouted, one hand grabbing tightly onto the door frame, one hand stretched out ahead of her, flicking her wrist, beckoning JJ forward. A strong gust of wind whipped through her already messy dark-brown hair as the massive blade flew past her, perilously close.

"EMILY, I CAN'T!" JJ exclaimed, her voice choked and hoarse, her face etched with an expression of pure panic. Tears were welling up in her eyes unceasingly, misting her vision, replacing those that had brimmed over her bags and rolled down her cheeks. "MY PANTS' CAUGHT UNDER THE WALL!"

Earlier, JJ was at the ready to follow Emily's lead and make her own run when the subsequent window of opportunity opened up for her, only to find herself snared and stuck. She shifted onto her back as she clawed and clutched at various parts of her right pants leg, which had a little more than half an inch of its hem cragfast under the slit of the moving wall, trying frenetically, forcefully to yank it free.

But even as her knuckles had been drained of blood, JJ's efforts were to no avail.

JJ was outright crying as fear got the better of her, invading every piece of her mind, every part of her body. She was gasping laboriously for every breath she took, trying urgently to drag more air into her lungs as the increasing pressure of the walls on either side of her was determined to snuff it out and suffocate her. She writhed violently on the floor and despite having limited motion with her right leg, it didn't discourage her from kicking at air, using the force to try to tug her pants leg out.

Her movements were frantic and emphatic. Keys were jabbing acutely into her flesh and rubbing roughly against her exposed skin and the raw wound on her back, but overran by her manic nerves, pain had become simply a numb sensory.

_Vroom._

The walls have reached the door frame, closing in on JJ's shoulders. The fabric of her pants were now wrapped skin-tight round her calf as the wall sucked more of it underneath its huge concrete body when it moved.

"EMILY! HELP ME!" JJ screamed, her chest heaving as she thrashed around helplessly, unable to hold in her torturous agitation.

"HANG ON, JJ! I'M COMING!" Emily hollered reassuringly in response, feeling a shiver travel down the length of her spine at hearing the outcry for help, chastising herself crudely on the inside for even needing JJ to yell for it in the first place. She tore her eyes off of a wrestling JJ to the swinging pendulum blade, shifting restlessly in her kneeling position as she looked on intently for her opening.

The moment the blade flew out of the door, Emily scrambled to her feet and rushed into the room, bending her body down and putting her hands over her head, shielding it. She half-stepped, half-jumped over JJ on the ground before crouching and joined in on JJ's endeavors to pull the pants leg out from under the cursed wall.

"IT'S NOT FUCKING COMING OFF!" Emily shrieked in frustration, the muscles in her arms burning red-hot in exertion. Her body was dog-tired and her strength was waning, so rather than stubbornly sticking to their obviously failing plan with time and space against them, she started to tear apart the woolen material of JJ's pants, using her might to snag open the seams before splitting it down to the hem and then hurriedly, haphazardly ripped the pants leg off JJ at thigh level.

"Alright, JJ... C'mon... Get up," Emily urged as she panted, snaking her hands under JJ's arms to haul her up.

_Vroom._

The two agents stood with their bodies slanted at a slight angle as the space between the walls had become too narrow.

Emily wrapped an arm around JJ's waist, holding the blonde close against her, not caring the least bit about JJ's blood and sweat soaked back staining and damping her front. She maintained her entire focus on keeping them out of reach of the still swinging steel, waiting for the perfect opportunity for both of them to get out of the room for good.

"When I say go you run like hell, you hear me?" Emily asked in breathy whisper, her warm, heavy breath tickling JJ's ears with each word.

JJ, who was too much out of breath to give a verbal answer, simply gave a few short, quick bobs of her head as an affirmative. She used the back of her hand to furiously wipe off the tears that seemed to flow perpetually down her face as she tried to regulate her breathing, clinging on to the last shred of self-control she had left.

When the blade rushed down towards them for the umpteenth time, Emily's hold on JJ's waist tightened in anticipation. She watched with bated breath as it stopped for a split second, and hovered right in front of them, before it began its swing back to where it came from.

In her mind, one thought was clear as day – it's now or never.

"GO, JJ! NOW!" Emily exclaimed, instantly letting go of her protective hold on JJ, allowing her to run free. She followed a mere quarter of a step behind as the two of them bolted through the narrow doorway and stumbled out of the room, taking an instinctive dive to the side. She fell partially on top of JJ as they collapsed onto the granite-like ground with a double _thud-thud _accompanied by a series of loud cries and groans of pain.

_Vroo- Boom!_

They cringed at the sudden thunderous, monotonous roar that resonated in the near empty room, its dull echo bouncing off the four walls around them, lingering in the air for the next few moments, mingling with the sounds of their labored breathing. Not moving from their positions on the floor, the two of them raised and turned their heads back tardily to see the blood-stained, unpolished pendulum steel blade sandwiched between two fifteen-inch-thick concrete walls. A handful of small silver keys near the doorway got squeezed out from the gap in the middle in the process, causing them to spill over the threshold.

The sight of everything reminded them of what would have been an extremely painful death, one that was way beyond their ability to fathom exactly how painful the death would have been, but it didn't matter.

They were out.

They were safe.

They were alive, well, at least for now.

JJ's supporting elbow gave out beneath her as she crumbled back down to the floor, her thoroughly exhausted body wracked with sobs of relief, disbelief as well as every form of emotions that her overloaded mind had begun to process and let loose, flooding her entire being, consuming her very soul.

Emily's chest heaved and deflated intemperately as she fought the powerful onslaught of emotions within her, determined not to lose control and be swept off her feet, hell-bent on keeping herself grounded, although, she was powerless to stop hot tears from springing to her eyes and billowing over. She enveloped JJ's body with her own and buried her tear-streaked face into the crook of JJ's neck, offering as much comfort, as much support, as much warmth as she could to an utterly distraught JJ, but at the same time, needing someone to hold onto, an anchor.

"I can't... I can't do this any longer..." JJ choked out in between gasps of breaths as she continued to cry, turning into Emily's embrace, trying desperately to soak up everything Emily was giving. "I can't take anymore of this... I just can't..."

"Shh, don't speak, JJ. Just try to breathe, try to rest..." Emily cooed as she sniffled, moving her hand up and down the side of JJ's back soothingly, keeping it away from the long, sanguinary gash the blonde decked. She tried to free up more room for air for JJ by moving away, but a strong grip on her collar tugged her further forward instead.

JJ clung onto Emily for dear life, refusing to let the brunette go, unwilling to come out of the bubble she's in, afraid that the second she did, she might simply fall apart into pieces...


End file.
